Barack Obama is a myth, our modern version of Pecos Bill or Paul Bunyan. What we were told is true, never had much basis in fact — a fact now increasingly clear as hype gives way to reality.

“Brilliant”

Presidential historian Michael Beschloss, on no evidence, once proclaimed Obama “probably the smartest guy ever to become president.” When he thus summed up liberal consensus, was he perhaps referring to academic achievement? Soaring SAT scores? Seminal publications? IQ scores known only to a small Ivy League cloister? Political wizardry?

Who was this Churchillian president so much smarter than the Renaissance man Thomas Jefferson, more astute than a John Adams or James Madison, with more insight than a Lincoln, brighter still than the polymath Teddy Roosevelt, more studious than the bookish Woodrow Wilson, better read than the autodidact Harry Truman?

Consider. Did Obama achieve a B+ average at Columbia? Who knows? (Who will ever know?) But even today’s inflated version of yesteryear’s gentleman Cs would not normally warrant admission to Harvard Law. And once there, did the Law Review editor publish at least one seminal article? Why not?

I ask not because I particularly care about the GPAs or certificates of the president, but only because I am searching for a shred of evidence to substantiate this image of singular intellectual power and known erudition. For now, I don’t see any difference between Bush’s Yale/Harvard MBA record and Obama’s Columbia/Harvard Law record — except Bush, in self-deprecation, laughed at his quite public C+/B- accomplishments that he implied were in line with his occasional gaffes, while Obama has quarantined his transcripts and relied on the media to assert that his own versions of “nucular” moments were not moments of embarrassment at all.

At Chicago, did lecturer Obama write a path-breaking legal article or a book on jurisprudence that warranted the rare tenure offer to a part-time lecturer? (Has that offer ever been extended to others of like stature?) In the Illinois legislature or U.S. Senate, was Obama known as a deeply learned man of the Patrick Moynihan variety? Whether as an undergraduate, law student, lawyer, professor, legislator or senator, Obama was given numerous opportunities to reveal his intellectual weight. Did he ever really? On what basis did Harvard Law Dean Elena Kagan regret that Obama could not be lured to a top billet at Harvard?

That his brilliance is a myth was not just revealed by the weekly lapses (whether phonetic [corpse-man], or cultural [Austria/Germany, the United Kingdom/England, Memorial Day/Veterans Day] or inane [57 states]), but in matters of common sense and basic history. The error-ridden Cairo speech was foolish; the serial appeasement of Iran revealed an ignorance of human nature; a two-minute glance at an etiquette book would have nixed the bowing or the cheap gifts to the UK.

In short, the myth of Obama’s brilliance was based on his teleprompted eloquence, the sort of fable that says we should listen to a clueless Sean Penn or Matt Damon on politics because they can sometimes act well. Read Plato’s Ion on the difference between gifted rhapsody and wisdom — and Socrates’ warning about easily conflating the two. It need not have been so. At any point in a long career, Obama the rhapsode could have shunned the easy way, stuck his head in a book, and earned rather than charmed those (for whom he had contempt) for his rewards. Clinton was a browser with a near photographic memory who had pretensions of deeply-read wonkery; but he nonetheless browsed. Obama seems never to have done that. He liked the vague idea of Obamacare, outsourced the details to the Democratic Congress, applied his Chicago protocols to getting it passed, and worried little what was actually in the bill. We were to think that the obsessions with the NBA, the NCAA final four, the golfing tics, etc., were all respites from exhausting labors of the mind rather than in fact the presidency respites from all the former.

“Healer”

Take away all the”‘no more red state/no more blue state,” “this is our moment” mish-mash and what is left to us? “Reaching across the aisle” sounded bipartisan, but it came from the most consistently partisan member of the U.S. Senate. Most of the 2008 campaign was a frantic effort on the part of the media to explain away Bill Ayers, ACORN, the SEIU, Rev. Wright, Father Pfleger, the clingers speech, “get in their face,” and the revealing put downs of Hillary Clinton. But those were windows into a soul that soon opened even wider — with everything from limb-lopping doctors and polluting Republicans to stupidly acting police and “punish our enemies” nativists. The Special Olympics “joke,” the pig reference to Sarah Palin, the middle finger nose rub to Hillary — all that was a scratch of the thin shiny veneer into the hard plywood beneath.

The binding up our wounds myth had no basis in reality, but was constructed on the notion (to channel the racially condescending Harry Reid and Joe Biden) that a charismatic and young postracial rhetorician seemed so non-threatening. The logic was that Obama took a train from Springfield to DC; so did Lincoln; presto, both were like healers. The truth? The Obamites — Jarrett, Axelrod, Emanuel, etc. — were hard-core partisan dividers, who had a history of demonizing enemies, suing to eliminate opponents, and leaking divorce records, in addition to the usual Chicago campaign protocols.

If one were to collate the Obama record on race (from Eric Holder’s “my people” and “cowards” to Sotomayor’s “wise Latina” and Van Jones’s racist rants), it is the most polarizing in a generation. The Obama way is and always was to create horrific straw men: opponents of health care reform are greedy doctors who want to rip out your tonsils; opponents of tax increases jet off to Vegas to blow their children’s tuition money; skeptics of Solyndra-like disasters want to dirty the air; those against open borders wish to put alligators and moats in the Rio Grande as they round up children at ice cream parlors. There were ways of opposing Republicans without the demonization, but the demonization was useful when followed by the soaring, one-eyed Jack rhetoric about reaching out, working together, and avoiding the old politics of acrimony.

“Reformer”

The notion that there was anything in Obama’s past or present temperament to suggest a political reformer was mythological to the core. Almost all his prior elections relied on a paradigm of attacking his opponents rather than defending his own record, from the races for the legislature to the U.S. Senate. He shook down Wall Street as no one had before or since — and well after the September 2008 meltdown. He was the logical expression of the Chicago/Illinois system of Tony Rezko, Blago, and the Daleys, not its aberration — from the mundane of expanding his yard to melting down opponents by leaking sealed divorce records.

The more Obama badmouthed BP and Goldman Sachs, the more we knew he received record amounts of cash from both (were the bad “millionaires and billionaires” snickering that this was just part of the game?). He renounced liberal public financing of campaigns of over three decades duration, as only a liberal reformer might, and got away with it. Obama raised far more money than any candidate in history, and will go back to the same trough this time around. On a Monday the president will vilify Wall Street, on Tuesday host a $40,000-a-head dinner for those who apparently did not get his earlier message that at some point they had already made enough money and this was now surely not the time to profit — or did they get it all too well? Wait, you say, “They all do this!” Well, perhaps most at any rate; but most also spare us the messianic rhetoric and so do not win the additional charge of hypocrisy. Reforming the system is hard; reforming the reformers of the system impossible.

So when Obama speaks loudly about Wall Street criminality, we now snooze — only to awaken knowing Corzine’s missing $1 billion, or George Soros’s felony conviction in France, or Jeffrey Immelt’s no-tax gymnastics were not just never raised, but are exempted through the purchase of liberal penance, in the manner that John Kerry never really docked his gargantuan yacht in a less taxed state, or Timothy Geithner never really pocketed his FICA allowances.

As far as the vaunted promises to end the revolving door, lobbyists, and earmarks and usher in a new transparency, well, blah, blah, blah. Obama did not merely violate his proposed reforms, but excelled in the old politics as few others had. The career of a Peter Orszag or the crony machinations of the Solyndra executives attest well enough.

As far as medical transparency, I care only that my president seems healthy enough to get up in the morning for his grueling ordeal and can be spared the how part; but I do recognize that we have a history of disguising maladies (cf. Wilson’s incapacity, FDR’s last year, or JFK’s numerous prescription drugs), and that, in recent times at least, we have demanded a new transparency. Was that why the media harped on McCain’s melanoma, his age, and his injuries? So I thought we would get the now mandatory 24-look at 500 pages of thirty years of Obama’s doctors visits, medications, vital signs, diseases, all the treatments that the watchdog media goes ape over — whether Tom Eagleton’s shock treatments or Mike Dukakis’s use of Advil or the Bush thyroid problem.

Instead, we got a tiny paragraph from Obama’s doctor assuring us that he’s healthy, and this from the most “transparent” president in history, in an age when the press is frenzied over a presidential Ambien prescription. To this day, I have no idea whether our president smokes, or ever did, or for how long and how much, or if he ever took a prescription drug, or if his blood pressure is perfect or under treatment. Again, I care only that he gets up in the morning — and that the de facto rules of disclosure that have applied to others apply to him.

We will never know much about Fast and Furious, and even less about Greengate. Obama — and this was clever rather than brilliant — gauged rightly that not only would liberals’ hysteria about ethics cease when he brought them to power, but in a strange way they would grin that one of their own had out-hustled the supposed right-wing hustlers. Or was it a sort of paleo-Marxist idea of using the corrupt system to end the supposedly corrupt system? Those who vacation at Vail, Martha’s Vineyard, or Costa del Sol are supposedly insidiously undermining the system that allows only the millionaire and billionaire few to do so?

“Magnanimous”

This was the strangest chapter of the myth, the idea that Obama the Olympian was above the fray. He lobbied the Germans for an address at the Brandenburg Gate, settled for the Prussian Victory Column, and, as thanks, then skipped out as president on the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall — but managed to jet to Copenhagen to lobby for the Chicago Olympics.

There was never a peep that Obama’s present anti-terrorism protocols — Guantanamo, renditions, tribunals, Predators, the Patriot Act, preventative detention — came from George Bush. Much less did we hear that had Bush for a nanosecond ever listened to the demagoguery of then state legislator and later senator Obama, none of these tools would presently exist. How did what was superfluous, unconstitutional, and possibly illegal in 2008 become vital in 2011?

Ditto the Iraq War. We went in a blink from the surge that failed and made things worse and all troops must be out by March 2008 to Iraq was a shining example of American idealism and commitment. It was as if the touch-and-go, life-and-death gamble between February 2007 and January 2009 in Iraq never had existed. Bombing Libya was not warlike, and those who sued Bush on Iraq and Guantanamo now filed briefs to prove that we were not at war killing Libyan thugs. We hear only of reset; never that Obama has now simply abandoned all his “Bush-did-it” policies and is quietly going back to the Bush consensus on Russia, Iran, Syria, and the Middle East in general. We will not only never see Guantanamo closed or KSM tried in a civilian court, but never hear why not. Are we to applaud the hypocrisy as at least better than continued ignorance?

On the domestic front, we are forever frozen on September 15, 2008. There is never an Obama sentence that the Freddie/Fannie machinations (both agencies were routinely plundered for bonuses by ex-Clinton flunkies) gave a green light to Wall Street greed — much less that both empowered public recklessness either to flip houses or to buy a house without credit worthiness or any history of thrift. Did we ever hear that between the meltdown and the inauguration, there were four months of frantic stabilization that, by the time of Obama’s ascendancy, had ensured that the panic had largely passed? Instead, blowing $5 trillion in three years is to be forever the response to the ongoing and now multiyear Bush crash, all to justify a “never waste a crisis” reordering of society.

I could go on, but we know only that we know very little about Barack Obama, and what we do know is quite different from what is alleged. All presidents have mythographies, but they also have a record and auditors that can collate facts with fiction. In Obama’s case, we were never given all the facts and there were few in the press interested in finding them.

To quote Maxwell Scott in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.”

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1.
ThOR

They fooled us once – shame on them. Is it really possible that they’ll fool us twice?

Exactly Cybergeezer. Unfortunately, our media has no interest in putting the truth out there. What this article fails to mention is the media KNEW who he was, but he was a progressive, and their job was to distort, hide and otherwise destroy any damaging information. Never was this more clear when the attack on Joe the Plumber ensued, suddenly, the ACLU fell silent, leftist pundits who would play the victim card had it been someone on the left instead joined in on the attack, and the ignorant everywhere jumped in with responses saying “He isn’t who he says he is, he didn’t pay his taxes, etc.” all the while falling into the easy trap of questioning someone who asked a simple question rather than the one who would take control of the United States. Sadly, many Americans allowed this to happen out of their ignorance and blind rage towards Bush. Was Bush a problem? Yes. But you don’t throw caution to the wind and get caught up in supposedly making history all to elect “anyone but Bush”. Equally, the intellegence level of many Americans was revealed in that they were sheepishly repeating that they refused to vote for Bush again. No, McCain was not a lot better, but Bush? Come on. This problem is coming to a head again—because of the willful ignorance of so many, there is a good chance this man will win again. Voter fraud is being championed by front groups via claiming discrimination. Why would they need this if they were poised to win fairly? They wouldn’t. And four more years of this man will allow him to put the nail in the coffin for good. And for the willfully ignorant who finally wake up, it will be too late.

OBAMA WAS NOT VETTED AT ALL BY THE msm WHAT THEY DID WAS REFUSE TO PRINT
OR SAY ANYTHING DETRIMENTAL ABOUT HIM AND JUST THE OPPOSITE OF MCCAIN AND PALIN
tHE msm ARE TRULLY DISGUSTING AND SO LEFT WING AS TO BE CRIMINAL….

Reason enough to never ever watch the msm or read their filthy papers again. The era of the msm media is over, just like the era of obama. both need to go belly up. we can send obama to the farm in the 2012 election. we can send the msm to their grave by not reading or watching. may they die a slow and painful death.

What I never hear inquired about is “…Who the he11 owns the main stream media…? Because clearly they are not owned by American citizens. Fox, for example, has 20% of their stock owned by the King of Saudia Arabia and another 8% owned by one of his nephews, a prince. Given the slant of the MSM one could easily conclude that they are mostly owned by the KGB or some such other ally of the forces of evil. I would certainly like for Senator Issa to look into that…it may explain many many curiosities……

This is what mystifies me as well. Can Americans wealthy enough to call the shots at so many MSM outlets really be so hostile to America. It is so uniformly widespread. The only major member of legacy media that gives a glimpse of hope that we are not doomed to swirl down the collectivist drain is the Wall Street Journal. But even it is timid when it comes to challenging his very identity legitimacy. I mean the social security number fraud is an open and shut case but no articles about it from a single MSM outlet.

isn’t that the point? Communists are criminals so the mugging has been goin on and will get worse, the stimulus was a theft and a lie. Make no mistake they have been building the Death star and simultaneously constructing the Larceny of the 2012 election.

The answer is an emphatic “yes”. Ask any NEA schoolteacher, college professor, recent liberal arts graduate, welfare recipient, journalist, movie actor, public union member, wealthy socialite, little old lady on social security, high school dropout, Democrat, gay advocate, retired government worker, almost anybody in Seattle, SF, NYC, and LA, and general nitwits that have no idea what’s happenin’, and you will get a “sure, why not?”.

Liberals’ hatred for conservatives and conservative causes is sufficiently intense to blind them to Obama’s disastrous policies. This is why the Democrats’ argument is “the other guys are worse”. That claim is enough to convince liberals, so liberals think it should be enough to convince everybody. Obama’s supporters really believe he saved the country from economic ruin even as he has driven the country toward it. If you point out Obama’s many failures to them, they first call his failures successes. When they can’t do that, they blame his failures on George Bush. And when they can’t do that, they accuse you of watching Fox News Channel.

Not only the misfit support, but I continued to find myself shocked by his support among salesman, managers, business professionals and owners I come into contact with. At least the misfits support the ideaology they feed off of, but when business people support liberal policies and nanny state enviromental requirments they are dumping over their own rice bowls. Amazingly also, are the reponses some business or Mfg’s have to a new government rule, local or federal, and how they try to take advantage for short term gain over long term loss of freedom in the market. Try getting a city bid for supplying a product or service, a lot the things a business has to agree to have nothing to do with business, just social engineering.

Rip: “Not only the misfit support, but I continued to find myself shocked by his support among salesman, managers, business professionals and owners I come into contact with. At least the misfits support the ideaology they feed off of, but when business people support liberal policies and nanny state enviromental requirments they are dumping over their own rice bowls.”

It is called crony capitalism. Wall Street and the plethora of companies whose bread is buttered by the Fed all suck up to him and the government so that they get all the benefits of said sucking. Plus they get to keep out others from getting into business by allowing the Fed to put in rules and regulations that strangle economic growth and entrepreneurship/

Oh, yes indeed, and we are about to make the same mistake twice, cut from the same cloth, if we were to nominate another professorial, know-it-all in the name of Newt Gingrich. Bring up his record, ask him about it, and he’ll tell you- (after evading the directness of the question and buffering his answer with non sequitors) one- that he did NOTHING wrong, and, two- How Dare You? and three- you are a liar for bringing it up. and four- he never said it, he never did it.

The 2008 0bama ad canned-paign blitz made possible the ascension of a Newt Gingrich, whereas before it was statistically impossible. And would likely have stayed that way had 0bama’s Hollywood scripted, ad-fueled Iccarus invention failed.

I am keeping an open mind on the GOP primary.
I have only ruled out Ron paul so far, as a nutty uncle type figure, naive on foreign policy and the dangers of this world we live in.
I find Newt to be pretty direct in answers to EVERY question.
he has not dodged a single one and he has taken quite a few bruising shots, and made his points.
I “think” Newt, then Bachman,then Santorum would be the best to debate the President. I “want” to like Romney but he seems too timid, too unsure of his facts and command of the facts, and he seems to lack confidence to me.
No one is without warts. No ONE. We need to find,support and elect the best hope for restoring a vibrant US economy, liberty,freedom and opportunity. Let the best man (or woman) win and lead the way.

I have never heard Romney say what he’s for. He just explains why he was wrong before, but never commits himself. If you fellows nominate Romney because you think he’s electable, I, for one, won’t vote to elect him.

Obama isn’t all that smart but he doesn’t need to be to outsmart the masses/morons.
Therefore Obama isn’t the problem – his followers including the media will continue to follow like lambs to the slaughter.

Estragon and Vladimir wear complexions
of vigor and health, free from the pinch
of alienation, the pitiless grip of self-doubt.
They now possess lives of meaning and worth.

Relishing the rewards of fidelity, they take one
last look around.

The once barren landscape is verdant with lush
sod, thick and firm. Bobolinks trill silvery melodies,
dulcet music for a reborn countryside.

The scraggly tree is full abloom, heavy with fruit
for picking. The dusty old road is now a paved
throughway, happy travelers pass by, certain
in their destinations.

Tuxedo clad, Vladimir and Estragon take their
places in the back seat of a black limousine.
Pozzo, attired in a blue serge suit, sits in front.
He wears dark glasses, holds a new white cane
and a box lunch. Lucky, the driver, is natty
in a smart new uniform, a proper chauffeur’s
cap covers his close-cropped white hair.

A contented lot, they are off to the city—
a place of harmony, where love and respect
abound, burdens are lifted, people are prosperous,
and the machinery of life runs smoothly.

Has anyone ever considered that Obama might actually be brilliant? It doesn’t neccessarily mean what you think it means…

Anybody ever seen the show “Big Bang Theory”? It centers around a group of CalTech professors who share an apartment, and live across the hall from a hot waitress who works at a local restaurant. Though it has a big cast, much of the plot revolves around one of the professors, a character named Sheldon. Portrayed by actor Jim Parsons (who’s already won 2 Emmies and a Golden Globe for the role) he’s a brilliant man in his classroom, and a clueless idiot in the real world. He has no understanding of people, how they think, what they want, etc., except in an unrealistic sense that drives everyone around him crazy. Trust me, here speaks the voice of experience (I’ve been around several people like this over the years) when a genius gets involved, things get horrible, especially if he’s in charge. See, geniuses never think they’re mistaken. As a result, they stick with whatever bright idea they had long after any moderately intelligent person would have said “That didn’t work, let’s try something else!” When they are proven wrong, they spend endless time searching for a way to rationalize their behavior, and prove that whatever went wrong with their brilliant idea, it *wasn’t their fault*. They’re typically mentally lazy (because their minds are so adept that they never had to study much in school, for instance) and they tend to want to noodle around and not get things done in an orderly fashion. They’re self-indulgent and a bit childish when in disputes with those who disagree with them. They throw tantrums when they don’t get their way.

Any of this sounding familiar to anyone else? I don’t think it’s that he’s stupid…I think it’s that he *is* a genius, and that’s the problem…

Well another way of looking at it could be this ….he has the 2 populations with the highest high school drop out rates in his pocket ( blacks and hispanics ). He also probably has the unemployable ….welfare recipients …dopers …..drunks …… convicts ….. so tell me how smart you have to be to say to these groups ….look ….nothing up my sleeve ….nothing in the hat

He had lots of help. And to this day, I talk to many that think he’s honest as the day is long and the best candidate out there…to get the blind to read an article like this in my state is akin to pulling teeth.

He had a very shrewd handler, David Axelrod who packaged him as the post-partisan candidate for “change”. It was a lie, but he also had the so-called “mainstream” media in his hip pocket which abandoned all pretense of impartiality and in effect actively campaigned for him furnishing him with millions of dollars in free publicity as his cheerleader and attack dog.

I agree Axelrod has called many of the shots as have others. Zero is a teleprompter creation.Far more candidate than potus. Any genius of any sorts would never have relied on the prompter has much as this bozo has.
His current “Axelrod” is Valerie Jarrett. She’s the one who would have him vote “present” on every issue from the pipeline to killing osamma is she had her way.
It is amazing that so little has been dug up on this impostor by now.

Sorry, but I think that the case could plausibly be made that “he” did not even get elected. The media carried the bumbler over the finish line, refused to vet him and carried his water from the time of his convention speech on.

No, he didn’t. He laid out what to him is a plausible alternative reading of things but he did not actually assert, let alone argue that Obama is in fact brilliant. To do so he would have to show us at least one and preferrably several examples of Obama’s brilliance in perhaps in a narrow way, and he didn’t. He just layed out a hypothetical, based on a fictional TV show, no less. Although, to be fair, we all know that such types as he describes DO exist.

I live in Hyde Park, don’t know Obama but know lots of people who do, and while they all speak highly of him I have never heard a single story that suggests he is anything other than a very ordinary intellect who fits very well in his highly progressive milieu. Even the ones who say how smart he is, when pressed, cannot come up with actions or writings that actually demonstrate it.

A lot of it boils down to “he is smart becuase he agrees with me” which is a very usual mode of thought among academics (like around the Univ of Chicago).

I am a genius and I can tell you this. Obama is no genius.
He’s crafty and devious, a bold face liar and he doesn’t work alone.
But he is definitely not a genius. I believe that his IQ hovers around 100-110.
Not genius territory. He thinks in plots which are simplistic but backed by lies to seem convincing. Problem is 50% of the country has an IQ HOVERING AROUND 88%. to them is is a “genius”.

@David W. Nicholas. If Obama is a genius he has not shown it. I’d like to see evidence.

Jeffrey St. Clair and Joshua Frank smoked out the real Barack Obama . . “a technofascist military strategist disguised as a Nobel Peace Laureate, but owned, operated, and controlled by Wall Street, Corporate America, and the Pentagon.”

Actually, he’s a socialist technocrat who thinks he controls all of the above. Thereby controlling the world.

Benito Mussolini thought the same thing, and sent Italy on a downward trajectory much like the one Obama has put us on. In each case the man in power was absolutely convinced he was incapable of error, a “man of destiny”, and just inherently smarter than everybody else.

And both had the full support of their governments, especially in telling their private employers to Shut Up And Do As They Are Told. Both also received a great deal of help from trade unions, who liked what the leaders were doing to the “bosses”, and didn’t care, or maybe even understand, that trickle-down economics cuts both ways. (Unlike the Italians, the ones who follow Obama had the opportunity to read Milton Friedman, but predictably did not.) As well as opportunistic CEOs who saw the situation as a chance to get rid of their competitors by becoming the lapdogs of government. (Paging Jeffrey Immelt.)

Both situations are examples of syndicalist socialism; a government which attempts to control the private sector by fiat’, and bestows favors on those corporate entities which play along, while punishing anyone who balks. The result is what amounts to a reversion to the “trusts” that Theodore Roosevelt was so exercised about, except run by government for the benefit of those in power, not for the benefit of the private citizen, or even the corporations in question.

In most respects, Obama is very much like Mussolini, and has had roughly the same effect on U.S. policy, foreign and domestic, in the last 34 months that Il Duce had on Italy’s in twenty-two years. In both cases helped along, not by “corporate interests” who controlled the godhead, but by legislatures and “social activists” who shared the godhead’s worldview. Plus a few rent-seeking corporate heads who decided that being the servant of a “new order” was better than being on its hit list.

Never confuse syndicalist socialism with crony capitalism. Doing so allows the real culprits, those in government and their like-minded activist friends outside of it, to deflect the blame for their own actions onto their victims.

You are right. At this point, El Duce is the closest fit to the Boy King.

But history also demonstrats that all of these thugs turn to violence if they aren’t stopped early enough. It’s an easy jump from authoritarian control to physical control. Hitler was only unique in his eagerness to get there and in the fact that he was spawned in a technical giant with a long history of militarism. It took him about a month in power to go off the deep end.

The pattern of authoritarian leftism is first control, then coercive control, then coercive control outside the base country (i.e., war). For someone who is absolutely convinced of his own omniscience, contolling a single country is never enough. They simply can never be satisfied until they are wiped out.

And the Senate just gave him the ability to use the military to arrest an American with no charges being pressed and detained indefinitely with no rights. Thanks to McLame. And I am not sure the Congress will vote it down. So there you go. He may get the POWER to use the military against Americans who oppose him.

However remember Mussolini made the trains run on time (or changed the schedule to reflect the late arrivals) and Hitler built the Autobahns(as a way to move his military quicker at a future date). I think Obama’s little quirk of tilting his head back in arrogance is so Mussolini. The Germans and Italians paid a devastating price for their ignorance ( or in some ways Greed). Will we the American people pay as great a price for our stupidity, ignorance, greed or sloth??
The 2012 election will provide the answer. God Help America so we can get this answer right. If Obambi is re-elected we may be doomed.
Griff

Remember, even to their last dying days, Hitler and Mussolini had fans and supporters. To the bloody end, with their countries falling down around them, there were die-hard fascists and national socialists.

In this nation we have an ever-growing population of people who think the government has all the answers, much the way that people in Europe did, and still do. Why work for it when the government provides it? Who cares who had to pay for it as long as you get it, right?

It’s a basic tenet of humanity that it can ignore that which is inconvenient to know and even worse, dismiss the truth as a lie, even when presented with the irrefutable facts. Psychologists and psychiatrists probably have a better handle on all this than I ever could but I still study the history or WWII which starts, amazingly well before 1939, with a huge curiosity as to how people actually thought back then, what they were thinking and how they justified their position.

It may just be that humans are fatally flawed to seek the hand out, the easy way, path of least resistance, etc. And it may be an equally fatal flaw for government leaders to think their path to re-election is to give money away.

Considering that Peron did many of the same things that Il Duce did (nationalization, massive infrastructure spending on “dream projects” on credit, etc.), I would argue that the old axiom “A difference which makes no difference, is no difference” applies to both. And to Obama as well.

All of the above had absolute (bordering on religious) faith that they were right. As Heinlein said, “Stupid is stupid; faith doesn’t make it smart”.

Be sure he also got his idea for an internal army from the blackshirts. And now did Il Duce’s campaign managers put it, “believe, work, follow”, sounds like something Mr. Hope and Change could go along with.

If BHO really was a genius, his grades, SAT’s etc. would bear that out. In that case the vain man who invented the Seal of the President Elect would have given those grades their own website (the-fantastic-grades-of-the-most-intelligent-us-president-ever.org) and they would be on display for his fans in between their very own styrofoam Greek columns.

There is only one logical reason to restrict access to his grades and a lot of his history: if it became known it would destroy the myth and show that Barry got ahead in the world not through his great intellect, but through connections and affirmative action.

I think the oft-maligned “birthers” have convinced me there is another reason he doesn’t want his grade transcripts released. I believe he was not an American citizen at that time, since I have not yet seen any proof that he could have been a dual citizen as a minor, having been schooled in madrassas abroad and the child of a (legally) then-underage American mother and a Kenyan (who would have been a British subject in the early 60s).

Enough of genius to “know his enemy”. To use this first,most important law of warfare with virtuosity in choice of people who could/would get him what he wanted: the power to destroy.

Or perhaps he was chosen by his mentors – whoever they are – as puppet to “never let a crisis go to waste”. Recall the economic meltdown was universally promoted AFTER Sarah Palin’s entry onto the political stage made Obama’s “certain” election doubtful. Very similar to political manipulations in the 1930s in Germany with similar repercussions.

To destroy with rousing cheers of those he would destroy, some still cheer his intentions now in full flow with the machinery of the most powerful social entity in the history of the world at his disposal. Thanks to the useful idiots, the best and brightest who swept the path to the throne with their contempt for the rabble, the clingers to guns and religion, racist/sexist cowboys of the West manipulating them to bow to this their myth of Obama the “New Kennedy” as Messiah.

Daring those who have the duty, the responsibility, to stop him in his destructive path. And knowing his enemy – initiation by his tenure in Harvard/Columbia Law and US Congress he learned just which strings to pluck to have them dancing to his tune – or else.

His is a true triumph: to damage, perhaps if his “Dream From the Father” is to be fulfilled, irremediably that nation and her people of which he is at the very least “ashamed” euphemism for hates and despises. Proof of which he manifests daily. Damage far into the future with the laws institutionalised by his cohorts and their allies in the Legislature and Judiciary. How much energy, time and vigilance is to be required just to clean up the mess he and his troops deliberatly “executed”.

He is often likened by commentators to the Pied Piper. Not knowing what the Sesame Street generations are taught about ancient moral tales, some do not apparently understand, enamoured with their metaphor, that the Pied Piper led the children to their deaths.

“Recall the economic meltdown was universally promoted AFTER Sarah Palin’s entry onto the political stage made Obama’s “certain” election doubtful.”

The Republican convention ended Friday, Sep 5, 2008. A Gallup poll was leaked Sunday, Sep 7, 2008 that had McCain/Palin in the lead for the first time. On Monday, Sep 8, the attack on Lehman Bros started, and the volume for the entire Dow jumped and remained about 50% above the previous year average through the end of the year (an unprecedented increase). The weekend of Sep 13, the feds took over Lehman Bros. Sep 17 was the day of the famous Money Market run that Paulsen and Bernanke claimed would end civilization if it wasn’t stopped. The next day was the beginning of a 3-week march to TARP. By the beginning of the next week, McCain humiliated himself by suspending his campaign. Obama remained so calm and collected that you would almost have thought he had a preview of what would happen. By the election, the Dow had fallen about 35% after a daily battering that hadn’t been seen for such a sustained period of time, probably, ever. Meanwhile, the price of gasoline dropped from over $4 to under $2, which completely negated McCain’s bigget issue and the reason he picked Palin for VP. By Nov 4, the community organizer who had never help an actual job was president of the United States.

George Soros made billions while two major markets tanked. He was later convicted of market manipulation for activities in those months by Hungary. Goldman Sachs made its billions, even though about 20 trillion in market value was lost in that period of time; just as they have in 13 of the previous 13 market catastrophes. The SEC began an investigation that was quietly tabled after Obama was inaugurated. Goldman Sachs eventually paid a fine of about 1% of a days profit for them.

A couple of msm “journalists” have popped up from time to time to pooh-pooh the occasional ignorant and bitter clinger who suggests that something rather strange was going on during that two month period. Other than those one or two swat-downs, it’s as if the greatest stock market crash in US history, all of which happened in the two months prior to the most consequential election of the last 100 years, never happened. It was all about Wall Street greed, you see, i.e., the normal way that capitalism oppresses the masses; and nothing at all to do with the election of Obama. Simply nothing there to see.

“Has anyone ever considered that Obama might actually be brilliant? It doesn’t neccessarily mean what you think it means…”

I see this test is a 2-parter. So I’ll answer them in order.

1) No. I would have required evidence for that.
2) Putting references to William Goldman’s Princess Bride aside, are you going to redefine what brilliant means both in the dictionary as well as the lexicon?
I don’t appreciate the arrogance in your suggestion that we are so simple-minded that we can’t perceive a scam when it’s foisted upon us. You need to spin faster than a centrifuge to turn tigers into butter, and a flat-footed ideologue into a brilliant thinker.
3) For extra credit. I don’t waste my time on television shows with laugh-tracks.

Not a genius, just conniving. I think the traits you’re citing as evidence of genius may in fact be true of geniuses, but they are not =exclusive= to genius. They also appertain to adolescent, self-absorbed, sociopaths.

You are absolutely correct. I’m a middle-aged returning student in cognitive neuroscience; as such I’ve also had a lot of exposure to abnormal psych. The behavior displayed by The One fulfills the textbook/classic diagnosis of narcissism. I’ve been saying this since a rhetoric prof. made us attend a speech O. made at our univ. 3 yrs. ago.

Sorry, cannot agree. I believe that President Obama fits the description of a psychopath better than a narcissistic personality disorder. When narcissists are frustrated, they withdraw or become depressed. Mr. Obama seems to be able to handle any amount of abuse – a sign of a psychopath.

The applicable term is “idiot savant” like the mentally retarded kid who couldn’t speak or dress himself, but could listen to any piano concerto ever written – once – and play it flawlessly from memory.

Obama has a talent. He can speak. He stimulates emotion, makes people believe he’s brilliant, proudly trumpets the most outrageous mendacities – and convinces people. Obama is a puppet. The real brains behind the curtain, Axelrod, Emmanuel, a veritable legion of socialist plotters. The strings run through the teleprompter, and clueless Obama’s one skill is under complete control of his puppet-masters. Idiot Savant.

I was accepted to Cal Tech and, in those days there were no student loans so I went to a lesser place. I resent efforts to diminish what I lost. The country is in the hands of those who would be randomly assigned to remedial classes. Obama, most of all.

Your argument boils down to “geniuses have bad social skills, Obama has bad social skills, so therefore Obama is a genius.”

If he were truly a genius, he would be able to come up with a solution for everything that ails us. Instead, his economic policy failed and he alienated our foreign allies. The EPA under his watch has attempted to assert dramatic controls over our personal lives by trying to ban lightbulbs and prevent target shooting in the middle of the desert.

Making everybody hate you does not strike me as being very genius-like.

I know plenty of really, Genuinely smart, even brilliant people in one or two fields. . who are absolute dunces in other fields. People have this odd view of all intelligence as general; thinking that if someone is smart, they are smart all over. And from personal experience, this with a relative . . . sometimes someone who is really smart often doesn’t acquire much skill at presenting or refining their arguments – they are like the natural athlete that relies on their ‘inborn talent’ which gets them by until they get to the ‘big-leagues’ – where suddenly they find themselves among similarly talented people who are also skilled – or even people of more limited natural talent who have learned how to use what they have better. I think the mistake is thinking that such an entity as a general all-purpose fungible ‘intelligence’ exists. People are intelligent at things. Sometimes they are intelligent at ALLOT of things. But intellect in one area does not translate to all areas.

To summarize all the “genius” hype:
If he were anywhere close to high intelligence, either he would have succeeded at his agenda by now, by hoodwinking his opponents, or would have his agenda implemented by his lackeys. Things would be much worse than they are now.
His decisions are not made as one who thinks on his feet.
And everybody is completely aware of the faithful he has at his disposal, whom he could actuate with his brilliance.
If he were anywhere near the intellect he is praised to be, things would have deteriorated at a faster pace. But, it’s not over yet.
The pathology could manifest more dynamically either in him or his sycophants.

You give him way too much credit…genius! He’s a socialist who never was vetted by those who make it their business to know. Just look who he hung out with, all marginal suspects. What’s the big secret about birth, school credentials, social activities. Who are you Barry? Shame on us for not finding out ahead of time. I see his buddy is starting to play the “race card” over at DOJ, it won’t be long before our President starts to complain that it’s all about the color of his skin. Way to bring the country together…JF

If some novelist had come up with a book that included an Obama character, the book would have to be cataloged in the juvenile science fiction section.

This is the thing that animates the Tea Party more even than the country going down the tubes. We just can’t believe they could get away with putting a charlatan in the white house. And if being a charlatan isn’t enough, the guy is stealing the silverware and getting awards for doing it.

And every day, there he is on the telly, rumbling some new nonsensical lies in the lowest register he can reach after 50 years of smoking. If I don’t have the clicker at my fingertips to wipe him away, I can’t forgive myself for a day.

The reason Obama gets away with this in front of our eyes is because of the media. I remember, for most of my life, the Left complaining about a having a ‘level playing field’ and endless whining about ‘fairness’ (hell, ‘fairness’ is the cornerstone of Obama’s re-election campaign – fairness defined in strictly Marxist terms of course). But as to the level playing field, what in the world is level when every single media outlet is blatantly partisan in its ‘reporting’ of the facts. The facts that we, as the citizens of this republic, need to make informed decisions. How dare they take sides? How dare they foist their opinions and biases on us rather than reporting the facts and letting the people decide? This country has a growing faction of internal enemies that is doing what no foreign army could ever do – and at the very top of the list of those enemies is the ‘journalistic profession’ *spit*. None of what is happening to us – NONE OF IT – happens if the media just performs its job, reporting the facts and not their goddammed opinions or arrogant notions of what the facts should be. Every patriot needs to see these bastards for the enemy that they are and make sure that when the reckoning comes, they feel our wrath.

Yes, and the indoctrination centers (colleges and universities) they come out of. Perhaps the biggest challenge in the immediate post-Obama period will be exposing, by-passing and otherwise neutralizing the vast, powerful propaganda arm of the Demcoratic Party known as the MSM.

We need a President who will call them out openly and repeatedly, and patiently show how they coordinate their deceptions, and profit from the agenda they are pushing.

I just don’t think Romney is the type to do it. For sure Palin would have been, I think Bachman would, and I think Gingrich would too. He already called them out in one of the debates. Another hero of mine is Col. West. But sadly he’s not running. To hell with compromise! We need someone who will attack the Left, and leave them gasping with the sudden, multi-directional, phased and relentless nature of the attack. Force them out into the open, it will be all the easier to crush them.

We the People should start a Draft Allen West movement. Of all the Freshman Congressmen he is the one that has stood against the “established leaders”
and articulated the theme of the Tea Party folks and the Constitution

Alan West is a great statesman. Agreed. It would be interesting to hear his explanation of why his support of another black conservative waned…Mr. Cain.

Mr. Cain had sweeping proposals, galvanizing America’s attention at possible governmental reforms in ALL of Washington DC. Was Mr. West’s statement of “Get out!” Mr. Priebus’s inspiration? Was it We The Elite People of Washington DC’s innate fears? Or was it a vicarious position aimed at Mr. West’s self preservation?

Just a quick follow-up thought: Everybody knows that running for office is expensive. We are endlessly instructed by the media on the corrupting influence of money on campaigns. OK, got it. But reflection shows that the vast majority of that money is spent on TV advertising – basically giving money to the media – in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Republicans/conservatives actually have to gather that money and pay for advertising. Democrats do as well, but the big question is – how much is the FREE advertising that Democrats get at the hands of the media worth? Hmmmm? Seems to me that the media makes unreported contributions to the Democratic Party on the order of what? 10 to 1 in favor of Democrats over Republicans? 100 to 1? I believe it was Evan Thomas of Newsweek who said that the media’s support of Democrats was worth 15-20% in the polls/election results. The bottom line is that the value of the media’s bias is – in the words of the credit card commercial – PRICELESS. Yet the media will lecture and scold us on every nickel that the evil Koch brothers give to Republicans. And at the same time I will bet you $100 that 9 out of 10 Americans on the street couldn’t tell you who George Soros was if their lives depended on it. Like I said earlier – the media is our #1 enemy.

When did it happen? 1988 and the Gary Hart campaign. Gary Hart was the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination. All the press loved him. He challenged the press to find a shred of impropriety in his life. The press in those days was still doing its job. The press uncovered his affair with Donna Rice, complete with photos on a boat named ‘Monkey Business’. Hart was finished.

I remember years later watching a journalist describe how they all realized they had just taken out their favorite guy and vowed to never do that again. The press has never been objective since.

After seeing Evan Coyne Maloney’s Indoctrinate U, it all became clear as day.
How many millions of Obamas has the university system put out?
The only hope we have is reality hitting them upside the head as Allston bellow outlines happening to a friend.

When it comes down to it we all want the nice house in a peaceful safe neighborhood. A few holidays a year, a car, a good school to send our kids to. That all comes at a high price, it’s hard work, good old fashioned morals and ethics, family values, all the stuff these kids are told to hate. If they choose never to wake up they need to become part of the socialist cabal of connections, which is what you see in a Clinton, Obama, Rahm, etc..

Your essay put me in mind of the Charlie Rose Show from Nov 5, 2008. The segment ran just over 20 minutes. His guests were Evan Thomas, Newsweek Editor and Jon Meacham, Newsweek Editor-at-Large and they were discussing the upcoming ‘special election issue’ what happened and why. Very friendly discussion. There had been a team of reporters following the candidate, Newsweek had a ‘chinese wall’ between field reporters and rest of staff.

So only now could Meacham let us know that: Saul Alinsky was the model, can’t offend the people, no militancy. Axelrod understood this. That there was a slightly creepy cult of personality, Obama managing his own spectacle, deeply manipulative.

Good thing we get to read about it in the special edition. Shame on them for not doing their job and reporting on who Obama was before the election. Have to respect the chinese wall don’t you know?

Intellectuals in residence, good Lord. What clowns.!
Better yet is when Rush Limbaugh did a loop of them saying the lines over and over again in that oh so sophisticated manner, or when Rush would imitate their condescending voices, ” we dont’ know who Barack Obama is”
Yet us stump toothed, troglodyte, common sense hicks knew everything their was to know, go figure.

Your essay is spot on. But why is the press so totally silent and supportize of Obama when under Bush it was relentlessly hostile – even praising a movie about an imaginary assassination. Why did the press destroy Cain and Palin but not Romney or McCain? Why is it attacking Gingrich, Bachman and Perry with half-truths and inuendo?

Why does a devout Christian name himself after Mohammed’s horse and a family of blood-soaked tyrants? When he changed his name from Barry Soetoro he obviously kept the parts he liked.

Inquiring minds wat to know!

What ever happened to all his old girlfriends? Were they sold in the Sudan slave markets when he was done with them? Or are they tucked away in some Saudi harem? Or did they join a convent? Are they missionaries in Uganda? Were they black, white, yellow, or red? Are they alive?

There aren’t any old girlfriends, sol. Not one has ever appeared. Not even a hint of one, other than when Bill Ayers described his old girlfriend to a tee and claimed she was Obama’s in the book Ayers wrote for him.

Think about it. It’s something you can research if you are curious about it.

There is a reason for no former girlfriends. 0bama spent a lot of time in a “bath house” called the Gentlemens Club or something like that in Chicago. So did Emanuel. You can google it, I guess they could not scrub everything. There are all kinds of stsories out there, a lot of them muysteriously gone though. REgie Love, his “body man” is another interesting interlude. So is that actor, who was on “House” (forgot his name).
However the MSM made sure, that no one ever mentioned anything.

I do think it is strange that there seem to be no former girlfriends, fellow students, teachers, professors, neighbors, etc. etc. Why is this? It is not like they’re not out there, has the press simply decided whatever they might have to say is not news?

I wonder if the pundits, writers, commentators and intellectuals of the 2nd and 1st century BC in Rome said many of the same things during the unravelling of the Republic and its constitutional framework, as the Patricians undermined and then overwhelmed the Plebian Assembly and its institutions on the way to the establishment of the Imperium.
Because, folks – that’s what it looks like we are broadly experiencing in the USA right now.
Once the patricians took over, the plebians never gave them any more serious problems – the bread dole and the expropriation of bankrupt farm holdings from the Roman farming class to the Patricians, with their replacement by slave-worked Latifundia, took care of that. But a new Merchant class rose up during the Republican period to challenge for power, a challenge only thwarted by the Patricians bringing them into the fold as Knights (equites) with nearly the same status and power as the Patricians themselves….Does that sound eerily familiar? It should….
Though the removal of Obama in 2012 will at least remove an inept, idiotic, cretinous, abysmally foolish and pathologically narcissistic adolescent somewhat reminiscent of Commodus or Nero, I don’t see his replacement by a mainstream Republican as checking or reversing the rise of an all powerful central government with socialist & fascist policies & institutions that crush what remains of our constitutional protections and freedom.

“Wait, you say, “They all do this!” Well, perhaps most at any rate; but most also spare us the messianic rhetoric and so do not win the additional charge of hypocrisy. Reforming the system is hard; reforming the reformers of the system impossible.”

And therein lies the rub Dr. Hanson. Is it logical to replace the Marxist who knows what he believes in with a Gingrich or Perry who speak in pure clicheese and spit out applause lines and spin fairy tales to rival those of the One himself?

Cut their pay and half and send them home for a year? Good luck with that one.
Subpoena Supreme Court Justices to appear before congressional committees? Oh yeah, that should work out well. Reform the United Nations? Oh sure, in the morning before breakfast.

Earth to GOP candidates, and we fools with nothing better to do with our time then follow these children, is anyone there? Does anyone care anymore? Are there any adults left in the room? Is there an unemployed blogger left or have they all taken up the pursuit of slaying the Mormon Cultist?

Obama is a simulacrum, an image that auto-morphs, and is readily distorted by the viewer himself. They thought he was the perfect construct to lead (and to hide) their final transformation (and pillaging) of our society. But he is a flawed puppet. His flaw is that he hates humans. Thus, instead of connecting with them (in order to better flatter and / or deceive them), he stood aloof and remote. His teleprompters made him seem scripted and insincere. His spiteful gestures revealed the alien in our midst. In short, he tipped his hand. He let off hints that he was not really the messiah that he and his handlers tried to manufacture. He himself drew attention to his radical agenda. They should have gone with Hillary. They would now have most of what they want and most of America would probably be none the wiser, since she is better at appearing sincere. Instead they are inexorably headed for electoral annihilation. Then we go after the ringleaders.

Yes, Gylippus, he certainly hates, and it is the key to understanding him.

But he does not hate everyone equally.

Get familiar with the teachings of Rev. Wright–his pastor & mentor for 20 years–to understand which humans he hates. Of course he hates the Jews & Israel. And he hates America (“God damn America”)and white people in general.

And look to Rev. Wright to understand those humans who get his approval. The Black Muslims especially and the Muslims too.

Yes, I’m sure you’re right, that he does not hate all equally. Still, it seems to me that he treats his base (blacks, hispanics, the young…?) with a certain amount of contempt too, and even the MSM who built him up and provide him with running cover. Certainly he is prepared to enact policies that will harm them. Beneath that warm exterior is a brittle, bitter man who never found a place where he could really “belong”. But instead of focusing on the good things that came his way, he focused on his resentment, and nurtured it into a simmering hate. That is the measure of the man. Beneath all that he does is the urge to destroy. That’s why he was drawn to hate mongers like Wright and Ayers. He was used to fawning audiences, but once he plied his wares on people who could actually think, he stood revealed. He’s aware of his mistake now, but he has left himself no choice but to forge straight ahead at accelerating speed. He fears his handlers more than he fears our displeasure, and probably for good reason.

I was working in Berkeley when O’s innauguration happened. The office stopped work to watch ‘history’ on TV … this cool, smart-sounding black man who was the antithesis of Bush, who they detested.

What was it about Obama that drew these normally cynical people so powerfully, so unquestioningly to the hope and change call?

Mostly, I think, it *is* about race. It’s not so much what is said, rather it’s who is saying it. We’ve all been taught that a black man in America must have an understanding of what ails us as no white man can possibly have. People so wanted this combination of message and messenger, particularly those in academia and journalism, that there was simply no dirt there for them to dig up.

Obama had a very “charming” approach at the outset and the guile fooled many people and also used the “historical” etc storylines which were fabricated by the fellow travelers of the One. Obama, obviously is just a rabid ideologue mouthing
and espousing liberal talking points. His “inner circle” are the ones that bear watching. Look at all the appointees; the DOJ hires etc etc and even the TOTUS. Literally everything Obama says is scripted; prepared by someone else – please tell me that it’s obvious, even in the Cairo speech. The Left & Islam are steering Obama.

All the evidence, daily demagoguing and gaffes straight from the mouth of a liberal moron and we’re STILL “wondering” about Obama? Why? It’s a total waste of time and energy … exactly what Axelrod loves.

For the FBI and CIA to fail the country in letting a Con man and his merry men get into office is beyond idiocy and criminal. Americans should be asking how these agencies can protect their country from outside threats when they can’t even protect the highest office and houses (congress and senate) from being infiltrated and subverted. The American people should be actively demanding for proof of this President’s eligibility. And last, there should be questions if not lawsuits filed against the Democratic Party and its media propaganda arms as to their complicity in failing to vet, actively guarding, and promoting a fake.

The president would have faced impeachment by now had he not been black. To charge him would cause riots in every major city, with utter destruction. Such riots occurred in the past. Every politician knows that most (90% per polls) blacks believe white people caused all of their problems and that whites are racists. When 20% of the people believe this, the president can do whatever he pleases and no one can stop him.

As for Australia, I pity you too. It was ironic that when people and countries were starting to question Global warming gate, it’s when your clueless Prime Minister decided to bring your country into the hoax – what is up with her? Is she so hungry in belonging and impressing the world’s “pseudo” elitist, err, idiotic crowd? Australia as a country and people already has been recognized as an outstanding country with great people, no need to impress those idiots in order to belong – you already arrived! She will cost every individual and family big green bucks (The bucks is what makes the green in AGW, it has nothing at all to do with climate). As to the pandering to Islamic ideologues, you should see what is happening in Europe, which is where you are heading. I believe it is time for you to organize and vote her, her party, and the coalition out.

The questions that vex me are: 1. Was it ‘Chicago Protocols’, by the Democrats, that gave them the feckless GOP opponent McCain or are Republicans just stupid on the whole? and 2. Will those ‘Chicago Protocols’ or Republican stupidity be replayed in 2012?

No kidding! There has been an incredible proliferation of STUPID people. Almost enough to make one rethink having laughed at the Birchers in the ’60s, who claimed the Reds were putting drugs in the water supply . . .

Interesting that you should mention the water supply. In my state, Massachusetts, it is one heckuva a strange coincidence that the towns with a mumicipal water supply tend to be really liberal and the towns with well water tend to be really conservative.

Wow, another nice summation by Dr. Hanson. Yes, let’s gather our rocks all in one place so they will be available as talking points for a Presidential debate. From “wise Latinas” to a damned America, Obama will need to come to a debate in a tank to fend of an avalanche of conspicuous bigotry and corruption if the opposite podium is “wise” enough. Presumably his wisdom won’t emanate from his melanin or last name.

Obama success is largely due to his ability to focus on his bs talking points.Unfortunately Republicans refuse to concentrate on any core principles.Their interest in controlling the deficit has disappeared.Reagan’s 11th commandment has been adopted by the other side. In 08, the democratic contenders spent their debates at taking Bush. In the GOP debates the candidates attack each other and only attack the left in vague terms.None seem that interested in articulating how America is being destroyed.

Barack Obama is a dream. In 2008, the dream was hope and change. In 2012, it will be progress, thwarted by evil partisans and selfish greed. As Gertrude Stein said, “there is no there there.” He needs enemies to draw attention from his lack of depth, for he is truly a mile wide and an inch deep. He is an illusion — always appearing to be more than he is, always, more promise than reality. He is, and always has been, the sum projection of what others want him to be. Barack Obama doesn’t exist, except in the hearts and minds of minions and sycophants.

All conservatives ought to be in agreement that the “reporters” who had corporate-sponsored pulpits during the 2008 election season but failed to report about Obama ought never to be seen as credible or honest again.

Too often, we as a group let people who have intentionally tried to injure us off too easily. Too often, someone who has dishonestly tried to convince voters of something that is untrue is allowed back into our lives once the subject has changed. Too often we forget that the biggest names, working for the biggest brands, have told the biggest, most effective lies for their own gain.

Make a list of all of the “reporters” who have not reported to you about Obama’s college days, or his senate days, or his law school days, or his “organizing” days.

And never read anything written by them again. Because if we let them somehow re-assume the mantle of honesty, then we deserve everything they do to us next time.

I would add to your list the “conservative” pundits and consultants who are always undercutting the TEA Party activities. I would like to see Hannity, Ingraham, et al stop giving air time to the likes of Will, Buchanan and Rove because it reinforces their roles in continuing the detrimental influence of the “RINO Establishment”.

VDH paints the picture of Obama as a product whose advertising far outshines the product itself. As the saying goes: nothing kills a bad product faster than good advertising. As Henry Ford II said to his advertising guys “If you hadn’t promoted the Edsel as well as you did, we’d have lost another $100 million.”

At this point, most of us realize, Obama is a bad product. And while he and his administration hurt this country in ways that will take a decade to correct, if everything stays even keel, he has skated along with his advertising and still sells in places.

So far our Bad Product has been able to plunder, make war, demagogue, deceive and so on with relative impunity. No immediate challenge has come at the country during his term other than the usual litany of hassles any administration must address. But then, every administration ultimately does have its 911, its Pearl Harbor, its Iranian Hostages, its 1929, its invasion of Kuwait, its Berlin Wall, and so on through history – and now we have another about to occur.

When the European Union collapses in the next few weeks and the jury-rigged economy there also collapses rather quickly thereafter, in a series of fits and starts that our stock market will be the last to reflect, our Bad Product will be faced with some truly dangerous game changing choices. Based on what he does right now, has done, and predictably will do, there will be open rebellion in this country in 2012.

If Obama had the trust and respect of even a slight majority AND he had the substance that VDH so well identifies as not there, then it would be possible that he could overcome by leadership alone what will soon be a very desperate period in American history. But because he is a charlatan and has exposed the mindset of Washington DC as nothing so much as a Chicago alderman’s cashier grab, there will be open rebellion that will make the OWS scene genteel.

The socialist disaster that is Europe has failed and will fall at light speed now and so few are aware of the consequences of this because so few understand the solvency issues the US will also face. It would take a great president to lead us out of what is coming, but Obama is no Lincoln, he is in fact, not even a Jimmy Carter. His fatuity, fecklessness and inchoate character cannot possibly contain the upheaval or even provide a direction. He will in fact usher in tyranny.

We have not yet seen the catastrophe that the Obama presidency has in store for us, but we will, and quite soon. It’s the math, stupid.

You’re on point, sir.
Obama’s lack of leadership leaves a vacuum where others are sucked into with their solutions. Obama then spins his decisions off their ideas.
Totally pathetic for someone with the power of the position.

For eternity and a day I will be mystified as to how this particular generation of Americans could have possibly elected this person President of the United Stated. The internet I possessed had laid out a fairly succinct body of evidence that this man was a fraud. As of today this body of evidence is as frighteningly obese to be compared too one of those South Georgia backwoods wild boars. Yes, he’s a monster. So as of today if sanity even a modicum of sanity exist he should only win at best half of eligible voters in the state of Vermont. All the other states he should, if people are rational and free of the mange or untreated syphilis, well his opponent should win minimally 85% to 90% of the vote. Nope! This generation shall wax worse and worse. God grant me the serenity………

See those two little icons in the lower right-hand corner of these comments? That’s how Americans have been so dumbed down to elect Teh Won…and what passes for public education today. Large swaths of voting-age people spend their lives in virtual mirrored funhouses. I think there’s a zombie apocalypse coming, but it’s not true undead people that will be on the rampage; it’ll be those funhouse people after they lose their electric grid…

It’s time to face the cold harsh truth that Jeremiah Wright’s [and William Ayers'] hate-filled “God Damn America” is a sentiment. and mindset, more widely shared and deeply rooted in our country than we have ever dared to imagine.

1. The thing about brilliant people–the ones I’ve met in my own career anyway–is that they often come up with ideas and innovations and solutions that others did not. I would find myself thinking “Gee, I never would have thought of that myself” or “The stuff he’s doing is way beyond me.”

But I have *never* felt that way about Barack Obama.

He has never come up with one idea, one proposal, that couldn’t have come from Nancy Pelosi or Hillary Clinton or some Dem senator. It’s invariably straight Democratic Party or liberal boilerplate.

Obama is highly articulate–but he’s never impressed me as brilliant in that way that others have.

2. As for Obama’s “post partisan” and “no more Red State or Blue State” appeals, the discussion of those on various lefty blogs was quite revealing.

I actually read Daily KOS and Moveon.org and Paul Krugman and Commondreams.org to see what lefties say to each other–more conservatives should do that too.

And what the lefties were saying about Obama’s “bring us together” appeals is that they not only thought it was a lie, they were actually hoping it was a lie. They assumed that all that stuff was just to win over Independent and moderate voters–but once Obama got into office, he would govern as the ultra-liberal partisan they knew him to be.

And to the extent Obama has been forced by reality to retreat from that, the Left has been very disappointed: Why didn’t Obama withdraw from Afghanistan immediately? Why didn’t he close Gitmo immediately? And why, oh why, didn’t he put Dick Cheney in jail for war crimes? Why isn’t gay marriage legal in the entire nation?

That’s the agenda the Left was expecting. And they didn’t expect that because they’re dumb–Daily KOS and Paul Krugman’s blogs attract some pretty bright people. They expected that because in truth they were all surprisingly cynical, the Inner Party behind all the young fools who were swooning at Obama’s feet. They knew Obama was one of them all along.

Funneeey. Have you ever heard him interviewed about a subject for which he doesn’t have a talking point? In that situation he sounds like an idiot. His only talent is tennis-necked reading of a teleprompter.

He has a lifetime of talking points for the example you give. Watch him in a situation that does not revolve around either himself or a socialist agenda item; then he exhibits mediocre communication skills at best.

I think the “Widow’s mite” would be more appropriate as far as intrinsic value and size you would need a magnifying glass to see it and it as well having nearly no value at all, would like it to be the change left in his pocket after his criminal trial for the theft he has done on the taxpayers of this nation!

From the moment he first appeared as a candidate, Obama was familiar to me.

Have you ever had a friend in Junior High or High School who was a chronic Bullshit artist? The kind who, at age 17, will tell people he was a member of the CIA, or had the opportunity to drive a vastly expensive sportscar, or is related to all of these *famous* people?

I have a good friend who was exactly like this, many decades ago. Fortunately for him, school ended, he had to go out into the real world and function, where that kind of crap will only get you smirks and sly whispers about you. He ultimately did well for himself, and is embarrassed at his youthful ego tripping he foisted on everyone around him.

Barry is the class Bullshit artist. But he’s never lived in the real world. Nothing has changed. He lies fluently, because to tell the truth in any given matter would shatter his entire fabricated myth.

Obama is a princeling full of self-regard, that’s all. He’s always been told he’s fabulous. He’s never worked to achieve anything because it’s always been handed to him, because he’s just so……Fabulous! There’s a line in an R.L. Burnside song that goes like this: That lazy M*****f***** stole my check and I want it back! That’s how I think of him.

Obama is the first Postmodern President. He is all construct, void of any real intellect. He himself admitted that he was a blank canvas upon which his devotees could paint any image of anything.

As far as true substance is concerned, he has none. There are no guiding principles (save the destruction of our way of life), no bedrock foundations (except those of Alinsky) and no sense of personal propriety. With Obama, the ends justify the means. The end is the end of America, the destruction of the underpinnings of our society and capitalism. Whatever enables those results are what Obama and his sponsors will do, and are doing.

Obama is hardly Mensa material. This is clear from his nonexistent college records. He cannot speak without much preparation and is a fumbling disaster away from the teleprompter, as Dr. Hanson points out. We were sold a bill of goods in 2008. His time since has proven a disaster of near-Biblical proportion: he is currently in violation of at least two court orders, is capricious in his enforcement of the law, and has so many scandals inside his administration that you need a program to keep up with them.

What we need is to wake up our neighbors to the destructive habit of voting with our emotions and start taking a hard look at the candidate’s record of accomplishment, their stance on the issues, and how well they adhere to the Founders Intent.

If you voted for Obama in ’08 to prove you weren’t racist, you’re going to have to vote for someone else in ’012 to prove you aren’t an idiot.

Splendid, Dr. Hanson; Splendid.
Is it possible to write about such a pathetically unaccomplished individual that has been endowed with as much counterfeit admiration as Obama without vomiting? Having the knowledge of great leaders of history as well as you do must leave you with severe nausea when pondering the “accomplishments” of this contemptible human being.

This article should be entered as the basis of any description of Barrack Hussein Obama in any encyclopedia or wikipedia.

If Barrack Hussein Obama WAS anything like what has been speculated, he would not need to try to identify himself, or equate his “policies” to former great leaders. And he would have enough confidence in himself, by now, to rest on his own performance.
As you have illustrated, and Obama displays on a daily basis, this is impossible.

If Barrack Hussein Obama were anything of an accomplished individual on his own merits, it would be evident by now.
But, unquestionably, it is not.

Since you elaborate on this subject so well, and reflect most of the criticism that I have posted about this petulant juvenile from the days when he first started his campaigning, I consider this a Christmas gift from you.
A very merry Christmas to you and your family, Dr. Hanson.
Thanks again.

Yes, brilliant summation. And frankly, the comments at least demonstrate that there are insightful and far more intelligent people than Obama out there who have easily seen “the emperor has no clothes”. Where, oh where are the rest of them? How can eyes not by now be opened to this destructive charlatan?

useless half a country wanting the stuff of the other hard working half; and, a slick con man drafted into the chicago way of doing business. mistakes made, spilt milk. lamenting about mistakes made won’t stop the train wreck we have barreling towards us. time to look and plan ahead. 2012 is going to be a game changer, one way or another. they realize we are on to their ‘plans’ for the next election. if we watch closely and keep pressing, they probably can’t win by cheating, and they have no intention of losing. this festering boil is about to explode. thanks to the traitors in congress and the courts we are behind the proverbial 8-ball. be ready. and remember colonel custer’s last words, ‘don’t take any prisoners’.

Obama is a genius in the manner in which Frank Abagnale was a genius. Convincing people that he contained a skill set that he did not possess in order to con them out of things he wanted.

There is zero evidence that Obama has actually earned any…any….achievement. He positioned himself to be given, without merit…all that his resume’ contains.

He has been lifted on the shoulders of runaway leftism throughout his entire life, from that ignoble perch he has looked down on the world and has never established any grounding of his own.

He is a Truman…but not Harry…Truman Burbank. His life is a constructed reality in which he plays a role designed and orchestrated for him by radical extremists. Frank Marshall Davis becomes his mentor, then the radical professors at college, then Cooper Union types, then Jeremiah Wright, then Bill Ayers, then the Midwest Academy, the New Party, and finally Soros and the Chicago machine.

In this constructed reality, the news programs, daily metropolitan newspapers, magazines, Hollywood and academia…as well as nearly the whole of the Democratic Party…are set designers, prop builders, and architects of the ongoing alternative reality.

Obama, the human, does not particularly like the tasks associated with doing the work of Papier Mache President. Writing legislation, passing a budget, reading wonkish briefings…do not suit his Frank Abagnale/Truman Burbank existence.

He must find a way to pass off the actual doing of things to others. His job is to merely convince the fooled to continue to believe the con. Nothing more.

He must “soothe” the fears. Insult the skeptics. Demonize the wise. Dull the alert.

Historically, even in the days when he was lip-locked with ACORN, UNO and SEIU…Obama was a Fabian by nature. He was a comrade in arms for the revolution and overthrow of capitalism, he was all in favor of shaking down the banks, strong-arming bank executives and throwing as much Marxist gunk into the cogs and wheels of the free market as he could…but, he never…never…wanted to announce those intentions. And, he hated getting his own hands dirty or leaving his own fingerprints behind.

His infusion of Marxism was always by stealth and always came with a disclaimer. He wants and wanted plausible deniability.

His “genius”, if any actually exists…is in the long con.

It would have been exposed long ago, if the leftists didn’t dominate our information stream. They are co-conspirators in the conning of the American people. We are in the middle of a revolution. The Fabian in the White House did his job by simply “occupying” the Oval Office. His only job was to Frank Abagnale on the campaign trail. Don’t expect him to do much more. It’s his only job…the leftists and their conspiratorial media/entertainment/academia partners will do the rest.

It isn’t simply the fault of the media that we haven’t found out the truth about Obama and have instead, allowed a mythic description to be developed. This ‘myth-making’ is a basic characteristic of Obama’s psychological nature.

As I’ve argued before, Obama is psychologically pathological; he’s a clinical narcissist, which is not a mild case of egoism but a severe case where the individual withdraws from direct contact with reality and lives in a totally virtual or imaginary world that he controls and that he MUST control. I suspect that Obama moved into this state as a young boy and it’s untreatable.

As such, he has developed skills to enable him to live within this imaginary fictional self-created bubble, that he controls. He’s a pathological liar; Obama doesn’t use words as references to real things because he’s unable to interact with reality. He uses words to beguile, misinform and manipulate you to be within his control.

This need to control others is not only basic to his psychological nature but it’s increasing, in his role as President. If you consider all of Obama’s policies – and he’s intellectually barren so they must be examined, not for their intellectual strength but for their psychological nature – Obama’s policies all reduce the freedoms and powers of individual citizens in this nation. He reduces the economic wealth and freedom of individuals, he reduces their legal rights, he reduces their political freedom to question and analyze.

And, he’s a master manipulator of emotions; he’ll use fear and desire as basic lures to, again, control you.
And if you resist him, he’ll accuse you of weakness: you are bigoted, ignorant, rednecked, rural, politically partisan…and of course, racist. He’ll openly insult you – as he has done to Paul Ryan, to the Supreme Court judges sitting in front of him, to leaders of US allies. That makes him feel powerful.

That is, Obama is also a malicious and vicious person – and will

If you continue to resist, to question him, or even, to focus on something other than Him – you will literally cease to exist. For Obama, you are either someone he controls – or you do not exist. As he ignored the Iranian demonstrators for democracy.

Why did America vote for him? I think that they wanted a relief from reality, from war, from being hated, from hardship – and Obama offered a purely fictional world – as if it were real. He offered a world where the oceans would not rise and where peace would exist – that is, he openly said that he could control Nature – both biological and psychological. And we didn’t ‘hear’ tha arrogance.

My suggestion now, is to openly describe Obama as living in a fictional world, and the GOP and Americans, as ready and able to face up to the real world.

Spot on. If character is destiny, then we’re in for some rough times. Ask yourself how Obama will react to defeat in the upcoming elections. The best case scenario is that he’ll be paralyzed by clinical depression. The worst case is that he’ll lash out at those who rejected him like a wounded animal. He and the first lady have never shown a shred of humility, or grace, or magnaminity. It’s going to be a memorable exit to say the least. God help us.

My view is that if Obama feels he’s rejected, he’ll turn vicious. He has a deep-seated anger and hatred in him, a deep contempt for others (notice his contempt of The People, ie, both Congress and the Tea Party).

Obama is malicious, his need to control and his alienation from feeling equal to other people, would enable him to violate all laws and moral principles.

Michelle isn’t as pathological as Obama; she’s just a typical Black Liberation leftist.

etab, your and cfbleachers comments are interesting even by your usual high standards.

cf got me wondering whether little lenin is just a higher form of a common con man (i.e., Abagnale). I leaned that way for a long time, but the fact that he was a community disorganizer for three years (if we can take his word for even that) makes me think that he falls more into the polical con artist camp. I can’t see why as skillful a con as Obama is would waste three years in unproductive work if he money and trickery was his only motivation. Curious what you guys think about that.

Another thing to wonder about is how this guy developed. Kyle-Anne had some interesting articles about that in 2009 I believe. Now it is even more clear how deeply pathological the guy is. My general thoughts about it are that there were three or four driving forces that shaped the world famous narcissist. By his own book title, the missing father was a major influence. He had no role model and was psychologically free to create his own image of himself. I also think that the adolscent mentor who almost certainly abused him also had a major impact. Nobody talks about this guys missing sexuality, but for any other person of such fame it would be the only question people would be talking about. In my opinion, he is homosexual and extremely angry about it. Not normal anger, overwhelming rage. The third force, I think, was when he discovered that being a black man of unimposing physique who can act white and talk in a way that seems intelligent opened doors that normal people can’t even imagine.

So I think the missing father put him in a fantasy world from the start. The adolescent abuse gave him a roiling anger he can’t escape from. And the magic beans of color, physique and voice taught him that he can get away with anything. All was in place by the time he was 19 or 20. Since then, he never faced a setback until 2010, despite never even making an effort. It was a magic carpet ride. So presto, we have a guy who invented himself, feels like a god, and hates the world. What a dangerous combination.

I agree with all your points about Obama. The only thing I’d add is his need for a dominant ‘mother-figure’ in his life. That was his mother, grandmother and now Michelle.

This person supplies the intellectual content of his life – as I’ve said, Obama is intellectually barren and has no interest in exploring the nature of economic systems, political structures or history. All these women were far left socialists, anti-American, anti-white, and utopians or unrealists.

As well, this person enables him to remain, in his relations with others, isolate. It’s hard to explain…but what I’m trying to say is that since Obama is psychologically incapable of relating on an equal and ‘real’ basis with other people, then, having a mother figure around sets up a ‘fake family’ or relations, so to speak, and protects his basic isolation. [This also enables his possible homosexuality to remain in control.]But my main point is that this fake family enables him to remain aloof and unconnected to other people.

Possible homosexuality? You mean unreported, like everything else about this person. Why are there no women claiming to have been his high school, college or law school girl friend? Any heterosexual young man in the 1980′s had many gf’s.

You are right, of course, about his overt behavior, but I submit that much of what we see is more training and conditioning than psychological aberration. Fundamentally, you can find somebody, or lots of somebodies, essentially just like Comrade Obama in practically every public employee union and some of the old CIO industrial union offices in the Country. The smug condescention is standard equipment. He was picked because his race disarms much opposition and he can “clean up” and “pass,” to use an old term the Black folk used for acting White in the Jim Crow days, as somewhat reasonable. Sometimes the mask slips and gives us a glimpse of the astounding viciousness that most of these people are capable of.

You always get the government you deserve. The “brilliant” voters chose the empty suit from Chicago, who “just happened” to be dark enough, skin-wise, to dazzle them into an ecstatic “Yes we can!” exhilaration. I’m imagining those ubiquitous Nazi celebrations with Hitler ranting and raving, shown on History channel.

It’s always a race against time. And, it’s said that justice delayed is justice denied. Can this be true for a whole nation of people struggling to stay free? It sure seems like it to me.

The brilliant litany of historical Obama moments, so beautifully laid out, analyzed and bemoaned by VDH, such as today’s gift, if fully realized in CONSCIOUSNESS by every citizen, would speed up time, in that Obama would be a quick gonner, de facto if not de jure.

The essential takeaway from most of VDH’S blogs exposing BHO is that yes-no, either-or, but most vitally, hidden-open is always at work. That is, the struggle is between those on the left who do their best to HIDE the truth, and those on the right, like VDH, who OPENLY put it out there.

So, it’s constantly about evolving, or peeling off the skins of obfuscation, into CONSCIOUSNESS, or awareness, of the truth. Right action must stem from real awareness, or consciousness, of the truth.

Voters, therefore, have got to become convinced, to their wanting-to-stay-free bones, that Obama and his enablers are at the core destroyers. I always try to remember that the universe seems to be made of, or expressed as, three aspects—creator, sustainer, destroyer.

People, things, events—they all begin, go on for a while, and end. Obama is all about ending, or stopping, the freedom of people in this country.

I certainly never claim genius. But I am perfectly capable of recognizing the inane.

When one can buy a vote with promises he can’t possibly keep, that is not genius; that’s manipulation. But you can’t manipulate without a multitude of willing rubes gullible enough, naive enough, and I dare say dumb enough to be hoodwinked.

Obama is not a product of genius and there was never for an instant Obama gave any indication of genius in 2008.

When I witnessed football stadiums of folks believing free rent and gas were at their disposal with a vote for The One, that Obama a “uniter” molded from Rev. Jeremiah’s mentoring and sermon, thousands fainting and wetting their pants in front of Styrofoam columns and a teleprompter on a stage, never once did the word genius enter my mind.

The words horror and aghast did.

Next time you hear or read a pundit say, “The American people are smart” – turn on your TV and scan the choices of popular entertainment.

TV’s a good example, Tex.
Recently, out of hundreds of channels to choose from, absolutely nothing was suitable for intelligent adult entertainment, unless you wanted to watch a rerun of something.
The TV has become the main avenue for indoctrination by the CMA (Communist Media of America), and the main stream media has become a PAC (Political Action Committee) for the Democrat Party.
The internet is about the last place where we can have spirited, intelligent discourse, and it’s getting polluted by the same sources. They are attempting to impose their “standards” on the internet, too.
We can thank the Liberal FCC for this.

I do not subscribe to the notion that “you get the government you deserve”, nor do I subscribe to the theory that the American people lack intelligence based upon the limited viewing choices they select from on TV.

When the information stream and pop culture/academia outlets for the formation of public opinion (and taste) are stolen, kidnapped, filled with distortion and indoctrination…in a representative self-governing land…that is the most evil of all sins.

Bad information, coverups, distortions, lies, …cheating the people out of facts, evidence and actual choice…does not produce “the government they deserve”. It’s a rigged outcome.

And, if every indoctrination vehicle is set up to point people toward a fake narrative…only the strongest resistance will not absorb at least some, if not more…of it.

Give good people the ability to know truth, facts and evidence…and they will form the greatest country in the history of civilization. Take it from them…and they will find a way to destroy it.

Don’t blame the people trapped in a hall of mirrors for not recognizing the way out.

And it isn’t a casual house of mirrors either. Thousands of people dedicate their lives to distorting reality to trick the rubes and therby enrich themselves with wealth and power. Not just the marxists; normal politicians, the media, union bosses, the intelligentia. Thousands is a gross underestimate.

You’re one of the finest commentators on the board with some wonderful insight and a gift with the word. I never fail to read your commentary.

But you lend the American public more leniency than it deserves. There isn’t a limited amount of information or choices – we’re inundated with information and choices. The key is discerning fact from fiction, truth from spin, right from wrong. That starts in the home and it is called personal responsibility.

Most of us agree our public school systems are failing. But if I follow your lead, they are failing because of government bureaucracy, self-serving administration and school unions. I believe they are ultimately failing because of parental neglect not willing to take a stand, raise a child properly, get involved, and demand change. The power ultimately rests with the people – in this case the parents.

If the game is rigged, it is our apathy and failure as citizens to become informed, allowing ourselves to be spoon fed with bunk, that allowed the game to be rigged in the first place.

And if the vote is bought, and I believe it is, that says every bit as much about the buyer as it does the seller.

Take a child from the age of 5 and pepper him daily with doses of indoctrination. Peer pressure him, assault his senses with every TV show, every movie, every teacher, every celebrity, ….that “X group of people are bad, stupid, intolerant, like wars, are greedy, pound that message into that child for 30 years.

Coverup the truth, distort the facts, bury the evidence. Keep that child as far away from finding out who and what is behind the scheme and pound incessantly into his head the “message”.

Let’s say he is a normal kid and doesn’t like to read opposing books, doesn’t really watch the news, is busy being a kid and playing sports or enjoying hobbies. Every single day the “message” is reinforced…and his world is surrounded by this pressing influence.

He gets a job in the big city and everyone around him has been given the same peer pressure treatment. He is not a news or politics junkie…he simply is living life and his “information outlets” are all co-conspirators to keep him indoctrinated.

SOME kids will break out of the cult. SOME will grow into mature adults who dig for their information and become aware of the fraud.

Others…including very, very, very, bright people…will get sucked into the peer pressure, celebrity proselytizing, …a sort of “cool crowd” pattern. And it would be enormously hard to “blacklist” oneself like a Roger Simon, David Mamet, David Horowitz.

If you are constantly told that Fox News is for imbeciles, that “intelligent” people do not “accept” anything “those people” say….and your “news” outlets coverup every story, distort every fact, bury all the evidence…then your information stream is cheating you daily.

It is not a matter of should you…as a five year old child, or 15 year old…or even a 20 year old…resist the “authority” of every teacher, every celebrity, every professor, every alphabet newscritter.

It is the indoctrination that is the sin…not the failure of anyone to resist it. They only need 20% of each successive generation.

Focusing on those who fall victim to the nefarious scheme and its well organized powers, seems misplaced to me guys.

With the combined power and influence over the culture of in loco parenti teachers and professors, the lure of celebrities as icons and “heroes”, the daily drumbeat in the media and the whole of unions, the Democratic party and “organizations” such as ACORN, …is it any wonder that they snare a percentage of susceptible minds?

They fan the flames of divisiveness, create more class warfare, racial warfare, ethnic warfare, gender warfare, age warfare, ….any way to separate us and keep us from being united.

Cheat the people out of the truth, distort, coverup…and you can “win” a propaganda victory. Attach it to the “aura of authority” and the coolness of “peer pressure” and you can “win” adoption of your “message”.

To blame the people being cheated, lied to, peer-pressured…is to focus on the symptoms, not the disease. Facts, evidence, truth, sunshine kills leftism. Blaming the individual for a lifetime of being cheated does not.

The more amazing thing is that any young people at all resist the constant onslaught of manufactured information.

When our generation is gone, if the tide has not been reversed, there will not again be a chance to reverse it for decades or centuries. And I’m not bragging on our generation, only saying that the unanimity of the echo chamber was less for people who grew up in the 50′s and 60′s than it is for people growing up today. There is also a natural tendency for people to become more aware as they age; but if there is no basis for the awareness to emerge from, it can’t emerge.

But this isn’t the hypothetical. As a parent, I was faced with all this, as have millions of others. I presume many reside here on this very board. I need not read anything further than your own excellent commentary to recognize, somewhere down your own path somebody has influenced you and taught you well.

As the old cliche goes, “When we give our kids to Caesar, why are we then so surprised when they turn out Romans?” And before my children ever hit the steps of a college campus, they had been taught how to filter real teaching from opinionated doctrine.

I don’t dispute with you the difficulty. It is difficult. But all the awful indoctrination in the world can be overcome with quality parents.

Have to disagree respectfully cf. While living my miserable life under the boot and whip of a communo-fscist regime for almost fourty years, I had to risk my freedom to get to any objective information.

I remember how my friend almost fainted after having managed to smuggle Solzhenitsyn’s “Gulag Archipelago” to Poland through the border control.

There is NO EXCUSE for the HOMO CONSUMUS DEGENERATUS who while having the unlimited acces to the information allows himself to get brainwashed beyond repair.

We don’t teach what a republic is. We don’t teach what a citizen is. All the sixties failures are teaching our children dribble. We live in a republic and don’t understand it’s history or traditions. We richly deserve what is going on now.

The most important sentence in VHD’s essay contained these words, which explains it all: “Obama…charmed those (for whom he had contempt)…”

He has contempt for poor blacks, he has contempt for working class whites, he has contempt for the working middle class, he has contempt for the rich. That doesn’t leave very many left for whom he has respect – except for perhaps the Muslim leaders to whom has bowed, and who remind him of the adult males that kept him in line in school during his childhood, ie, kept him in his place. Everybody else in life has let him skate…

An excellent summation of all the questions about Comrade Obama, Dr. Hanson, but why are we on the right prohibited from speaking out about the obvious answers? The fact that we are so prohibited by Republican queasiness and White America’s racial guilt amply demonstrates the brilliance of BHO’s handlers and sponsors’ choice.

I knew what then state Senator Obama was the minute I laid eyes on him, but then I’m one of the very few Republicans in the Country that has spent any time seriously dealing with Alinsky disciple, Meany School-trained union representatives and political activists. Most of this ilk are creatures of the deep Blue States and the Blue Doughnut Cities where Republicans fear to tred and even federal level Republicans rarely see and deal with the true operative level of today’s American communists; in DC, they just trot out their oleagenous lobbyists. There are four or five unionized states that go back and forth between the Democrats and Republicans, but Alaska is the only fully unionized state with a long enough tradition of either the legislative or executive branch or both being in Republican hands to have developed something of a Republican culture of dealing with public employee unions both politically and operationally in government. When I saw Obama, I just saw another smug, condescending union rep, but he is much more than that; he is a true Red Diaper Baby, carefully nurtured to be what he is.

Only links to the Communist Party will explain the behavior of Obama’s grandparents. By the ’50s it was dangerous to be a card carring member, so they were close fellow-travelling “progressives,” the polite word for communist. I don’t know why they were in Kansas or how the link was made, but they moved to Harry Bridges’ Seattle where the grandfather was ostensibly a funiture saleman but the family’s circumstances and associations are not consistent with that station in life. Only true “progressives” in ’50s America would tolerate, and perhaps encourage, Anne Dunham’s adolescent behavior. They then move on to Harry Bridges’ Hawaii where young Ms. (before Ms. even existed) Dunham engages in a very adventureous and very “progressive” lifestyle. (for those of you not familiar with him, Longshoremen’s Union head Harry Bridges was last seen with his comrades on the Kremlin balcony celebrating May Day) Sorry, most “typical white people” in ’50s, early ’60s America wouldn’t have in a million years tolerated a daugher behaving as she did. And remember other than the powerful communist influence on the docks, Hawaii was nothing like the groovy place then that it has become in recent times. In those days, Alaska and Hawaii had to be admitted to the union at the same time so as not to upset the balance of power since Alaska was so thoroughly Democrat and Hawaii so thoroughly Republican. Times change!

Somehow Ms. Dunham liases with a Kenyan communist who impregnates her. Most parents in those days would have sent her immediately to live with her “aunt in Montana” where the baby would be given up for adoption or would have simply taken her for an abortion, which while not so common as today were relatively easily available to those with means. She has the child and she and he are then both abandoned by the putative father. Of course, we’ll never see the DNA to prove the actual paternity. With some time back in Harry Bridges’ Seattle interspersed she and her whelp wind up with another communist, this one a muslim as well and it’s off to Indonesia, then one of the flashpoints in the conflict between the old British Empire and the Soviet-sponsored “anti-colonialist” communist rebels. It should also be remembered that while proclaiming themselves the “non-aligned” nations most of the former European and British colonies were firmly in the Soviet orbit, especially those that were Muslim majority. The Muslims may not have much liked the Russians, but they liked their Migs and AKs. Then the young scion winds up back with the typical White people and under the mentorship of Frank Marshall Davis. Then it is off to a private school education far beyond what we know of his family’s means and we really don’t have a clue how he got in, how he did, or who paid for it. My best surmise is that he was admitted to Columbia and Hahvud as a foreign exchange student and somebody outside the US paid for it all; that rather than all the “birther” nonsense is why they’re so secretive about his background. Then it is off to Chicago for field training, the establishment of a legend, to use the intelligence terminology, a marriage to a woman of the proper politics, and then into the university and into politics as the made-man of the Chicago machine. You will recall that Chicago was Saul Alinsky’s city. Oh, and BTW, Hillary Clinton wrote her master’s thesis on Alinsky, nothing to see there. And now Comrade Obama, the Red Diaper Baby, functions as the frontman and mouthpiece of the Soros-organized junta that first crippled the US economy to aide his election and now pull his strings in their quest to eliminate the US as a singular World power able to unilaterally act. I suspect that some of Soros’ allies were big money Muslims which would explain how Obama foreign policy has enabled the Muslims to stand on the brink of taking the Middle East and North Africa back to the heyday of the Caliphate, save only the troublesome existence of the “Zionist entity,” a bother they intend to remedy soon after Comrade Obama’s re-election; the relative quiet in the Middle East is not coincidental; no matter who wins the election all Hell will break out after the ’12 US election. If Obama loses, the most likely scenario is that Iran nukes Israel as his successor’s hand is coming off The Bible; they’ll wait a little longer if it is Obama again since they won’t need the fact of the US government in disarray to allow them to do it and get away with it.

In any event, if you understand that he is a Trotsky/Alinsky communist appartchik, he, like all of them is pretty easy to deal with. They are so smug and certain of their actions that they are one-trick ponies; their tactics require and assume a pig-ignorant “proletariat,” blindly loyal “useful idiot” followers, and predictable behavior by their opposition. Unfortunately, at the elected and appointed official level the opposition is doing just what the Alinskyites expect them to do because most of them are too ignorant of these sorts of tactics to respond and they are too innured to the Republican “be nice” ethos to believe what their eyes and ears are telling them. Equally unfortunately, a significant percentage of the still-sane electorate, those who didn’t vote for Comrade Obama in ’08, are equally unable to believe what their eyes and ears are telling them. Hopefully, we will be able to eke out a sane 50% + 1 and extirpate the Communist in Chief. If he wins, America and the World are on a sleighride to Hell and if we win, we’re in for one Helluva ride because they ain’t going down easily and they never forget.

His is unquestionably the strangest life of any well-known American in history.

Yet there is absolutely no curiousity in the american pravda about a life that would be grist for a dozen movies and hundreds of magazine articles. They have passed on story that would increase their coffers by tens of billions. That alone tells you all you need to know.

It doesn’t surprise me that the leftist house organs like NYT, WaPo, McClatchey, USA Today etc. don’t delve into it; he’s one of them. It does surprise me that no brand name independent journalists have gone after him. I know the risk; you certainly face the slime machine if you do and the standard marginalization as extremist and unreliable. That’s what they tried to do to the Enquirer on the Edwards mess until the evidence became insurmountable. One thing’s for sure; anyone who did it would NEVER be published again by one of the big, brand-name houses. If a state government went after him, and there is reason to question the legality of his holding office and of many of the things his Administration has done, that state would have the undivided attention of the whole federal alphabet soup of agencies. And, frankly, I know that armed with a small group of investigators and forensic auditors, I could put ANYBODY who manages public funds in jail, so it is a real rish. I don’t think any of the politicos are capable of killing somebody, but they certainly have friends who’d have no qualms about it. So, I dunno, it is easy enough to connect the dots about him, but even on boards like this, many will look askance at you for doing so. Fundamentally, the bulk of Americans don’t want to see and hear what their eyes and ears are telling them; we didn’t have an election in ’08, we had a coup d’etat.

Great piece VDH! You covered the absurdity of Obama’s election and reign mercilessly. Something the msm will never do. I have enjoyed the comments here and I can tell there are a lot of thoughtful people on this site. Many have deep and intelligent reasons for the behavior of this man and the reaction of the public to it. My theory is a little simpler than most because I have become a student of the public around me. My theory is that the more intelligent among us that were liberals voted for him by projecting their own beliefs and desires onto him because he never actually told any of us what he truly believed in. The less intelligent among us voted for him simply because he indicated that under him your money troubles would be over. Remember the Black woman ranting about how “He” would pay her mortgage and car gas bill? She summed it up for about 90% of the poor and uneducated. So when you look at it as simply a con job with liberal overtones it is easy to see how it happened. However I am not saying that he is not destructive or evil. What he has done to the fabric of our nation is unforgivable. But I do not believe that these same groups will have the burning desire to vote for him again.

That his brilliance is a myth was not just revealed by the weekly lapses (whether phonetic [corpse-man], or cultural [Austria/Germany, the United Kingdom/England, Memorial Day/Veterans Day] or inane [57 states]), but in matters of common sense and basic history. The error-ridden Cairo speech was foolish; the serial appeasement of Iran revealed an ignorance of human nature; a two-minute glance at an etiquette book would have nixed the bowing or the cheap gifts to the UK.

In short, the myth of Obama’s brilliance was based on his teleprompted eloquence, the sort of fable that says we should listen to a clueless Sean Penn or Matt Damon on politics because they can sometimes act well.

On a Monday the president will vilify Wall Street, on Tuesday host a $40,000-a-head dinner for those who apparently did not get his earlier message that at some point they had already made enough money and this was now surely not the time to profit — or did they get it all too well? Wait, you say, “They all do this!” Well, perhaps most at any rate; but most also spare us the messianic rhetoric and so do not win the additional charge of hypocrisy. Reforming the system is hard; reforming the reformers of the system impossible.

In a long list of erudite deconstructions of the Chicago thug, I think this is VDH’s best work.

“. . . all that was a scratch of the thin shiny veneer into the hard plywood beneath.” I take exception to your defamarion of strong, steadfast, hard working plywood as being any part of Obama’s character. A more apt description would be; “. . . all that was a scratch of the thin shiny, cheap plastic cover of poorly compressed sawdust.” I realize this defames cheap plastic and sawdust, but this is mixed company.

Why would God allow this evil now so palpable to descend on this once decent country? As things are now one is tempted to lose faith that God actually does involve Himself in the Affairs of men. And yet it seems so obvious that God raised this nation up to evangelize the world and stand as a shining city on a hill.

It seems now we are to be an example to the world of self debasement and resulting cultural decay. Like the empire of David and Solomon … we go to captivity and death.

Do you suppose one and one half million unborn babies ending up in medical waste bins might have something to do with this?

Ooops. Sorry. Please insert the clause ‘per year’ between babies and ending above. Of course that was a figure from a long time ago. When there was actually a meaningful national discourse on the subject. Its probably double that now. But we don’t talk about it. After all … it’s perfectly ok for people to fornicate like …. gee, nothing fornicates like human beings. Oh well. You get my drift.

Barack Hussein Obama is now President of the United States because of all the money multibillionaire George Moriarty Soros spent. (See Professor Moriarty in Sherlock Holmes.)

I worked in the presidential campaign of John McCain. He is a nice man but feckless. He took money only from the Federal grant for presidential campaigns and ended up so poor that he did not even have headquarters in Washington, D.C. He was so busy being nice that he refused to attack Obama – his associations with Rev. Jeremiah Wright (“I don’t attack a man’s religion,” said McCain), Bill Ayers, Rashid Khalidi, Acorn, etc.) – because he didn’t want to run a negative campaign.

I think the Soros Cabal had something on McCain, maybe from the Keating scandal. In any event these are people ruthless enough and knowledgeable enough to have pushed the Hildebeast away from the trough, so McCain wasn’t much of a problem for them; that “funk” and the suspension of his campaign didn’t have much to do with bailouts and such, it was all a contemplation of his future.

Strangely, Sarah Palin is Obama’s antithesis. Probably the most vetted politician in American history(from her trash n Wasila to her 25,000 email as Governor of Alaska.) Her record of 20 years in the political arena w/ true executive, reformist Mr. Smith Goes to Washington type of experience has been colored by the false bimbo narrative the Alinsky left invented for her. Shame the right didn’t fight to ensure the true facts of her very transparent, corruption fighting accomplished life became her honest legend.

I long ago concluded Obama was an uneducated, pompous, fool.
He is Kerryesque in his sheer narcissistic belief in his own genius, all the while demonstrating ignorance of common college, if not high school, instruction.

1) Yes, he [I know, heresy that the pronoun is not capitalized] most definitely is “psychologically pathological; he’s a clinical narcissist”, and:

And, he’s a master manipulator of emotions; he’ll use fear and desire as basic lures to, again, control you.
And if you resist him, he’ll accuse you of weakness: you are bigoted, ignorant, rednecked, rural, politically partisan…and of course, racist. He’ll openly insult you – as he has done to Paul Ryan, to the Supreme Court judges sitting in front of him, to leaders of US allies. That makes him feel powerful.

as ETAB said. Take that as a given based on past performance.

2) He [capitalization purely for grammatical reasons] is a politician. That does imply a concerted effort by him and his minions to control his image, and that is within the norm.

3) But the degree that this has been done implies not only massive efforts, but a degree of unanimity that goes far beyond the normal political PR in a free country. It reminds me of two things.

4) The first of these is what is called a “legend” in Tradecraft [something different from what I think Professor Hanson is referring to, although I think he has familiarity with the concept]. However, in normal usage, a “legend” is designed to be bland, normal, and not in any way obtrusive or attractive of notice. Granting that a politician’s normal touting of his background goes beyond this, but in a normal politician in a free country; there are primary and secondary sources to confirm or deny the background. There are none here. And indeed, the absolute unanimity of total shutdown of any sources of information, no matter how diverse is a red flag. If you are running any level of professional background check on someone, and you hit a solid brick wall of no confirming information; you [or anyone who watches any sort of cop show] knows that the person being checked may be many things, but most assuredly he is NOT what he claims. And he is a hostile.

The lack of confirming information indicates that the background is false. The unanimity of concealment means that this is orchestrated by an entity or entities with resources and methods far outside of those available to normal political movements in a constitutional democracy.

5) The second thing that crossed my mind was the word “hagiography”. No, not the technical definition from the various Christian denominations regarding the lives of saints. Rather, the more modern literary interpretation. It is a characteristic of totalitarian rulers regardless of ideology, to use the powers of the state [or of "a" state] to glorify their past in ways that indicate that those who knew them way back when should have seen their future glory presaged. Look at the official biographies of Lenin, Stalin, Kim Il-sung [and descendents], and Fidel in the Marxist genre. Look at the biographies of Adolf Schickelgruber, Mussolini, and sundry Petain-ists and Quislings throughout Europe in the 1940′s. Look at what is officially written about the various leaders of movements throughout the Ummah through its history. And indeed about various one-off tyrants from Idi Amin Dada to Ferdinand Marcos [who publicly claimed to have headed an anti-Japanese guerrilla group during WW-II called Ang Maharlika said claim being questioned severely]. This is pretty much a marker of a totalitarian when applied to a politician.

A second confirming marker is an aspect of that brick wall. If you look the tales of the lives of totalitarian leaders, there is another common factor. There is an absolute absence of any of the Dear Leader’s contemporaries or family members to confirm the stories, or more importantly deny the stories and maybe be the source of other, non-canon, stories that contradict the narrative of greatness. This especially includes acquaintances. Everybody accumulates casual acquaintances in real life.

If you go to school of any kind, there are people who know of you and have an opinion of you; along with those who have closer and more knowledgable relationships. If only members of a study group, or those who shared the smaller sessions with a TA in college; but normal people have at least some they consider friends in school. If you have a normal strength libido, regardless of orientation; growing up you have to have had some personal and emotional contact with someone other than yourself. If you have a job, you have co-workers at various levels of acquaintance; superiors, subordinates, and colleagues. If you work in a law office, I guarantee that the secretaries have your number. Also, in academe. In my former Department; I am sure that pretty much everyone in the whole Department statewide knew me, or had heard of me. And no, not all of the opinions held were flattering, especially amongst staff weenies. If I were ever to come to prominence, there are plenty of people who would talk smack about me. And I hope a few that would do so in a friendlier manner.

So why has Maxwell Smart’s “Cone of Silence” descended on everybody who knew the “smartest guy who ever became president” way back when?

How did that absence come about? The Leninist phrases “useful idiots” and “agents of influence” have actual technical definitions in Soviet Tradecraft. And those certainly apply in our current case to academe and the media. But that would not be sufficient to make the background airtight. There are other, more coercive, measures that are almost always used. Some are dry, some are wet. And the solid wall of silence is a good historical indicator that some of them have been used.

And for such a totalitarian leader, if the mechanisms of democracy are such as to risk denying power; his first recourse will be to go outside them. When he does, the first tool to come to hand will be those coercive measures, and not the mechanisms of a constitutional democracy.

6) Let me say, that I am not now nor have I ever been a practitioner of Tradecraft. I admit that in my eclectic group of acquaintances, there have been some who have been on the fringes of Tradecraft, largely military. And that I have picked up more knowledge than most people of the subject in my studies of events and personalities of the 20th Century. And I can relate some of it to my former career as a Peace Officer. I have done investigations, including background investigations; and I have broken more than a few alibis in my time.

I may well have a bad case of rectal-cranial impaction. It wouldn’t be the first time, and I have no “legend” of perfection to uphold. But I am, and have been, sensing tripwires being kicked, and starshell going up.

In the group of minds superior to my own that attend this symposium convened by the good Doctor; there may be some who have more familiarity with the subject at hand. And who can tell us if I need to pull something out, or if maybe it is not impacted at all. Please do so.

For in conjunction with events of the last few years; this may have a strong bearing on the interesting times of the coming year.

As you say, he not only has invented his past, there are no relatives to challenge it. Deceased: mother, father, grandfathr, granmother (days before the election). No brother, one half sister who had no significant contact after the age of 2. A couple of elderly aunts and uncles, but the his grandparents put an ocean between themselves and those people years before Obama was born. They know nothing he doesn’t want them to know. On his fathers side, they are all Africans who he has met for a few hours in his life.

What are the odds of a 47 year old man (when he was elected) without a living relative who can attest to a single detail about what happened in his early life? In America, in 2008, for someone born into an American family, who wasn’t born or raised in a ghetto…astronomical.

And what are the odds that a heterosexual man who would become the most famous person in the world would never have a female acquaintance come forward to claim her 15 minutes of fame, or $150K of fortune for telling about a kiss, what kind of companion he was, how he hurt her or helped her. Astronomical.

And what are the odds that he could be elected if the public knew even 1/10th of the raw facts of his life. Zero.

Elsewhere in the thread, there is a discussion whether or not the American people are to blame for electing someone who always intended to destroy their country. I’ve argued that noone should be blamed for living in a hall of mirrors…but if there is blame to case, it should be cast on people who refused to learn who this man really is. For those who heard the not hard to find out clues and still turned away, they should be ashamed because they are complicit with the con man himself.

Subotai and Art, thanks for your posts, (Art, those above and below this point in the thread). Look, I said above this post, where are the people from his earlier years? Others have said it too.

It is inconceivable that there is no one out there. How hard would it be to track down classmates at Harvard? Or, have they ALL been paid off? Where are the independent, investigative writers/reporters?

All of Obama’s purported accomplishments as a state senator happened over a few months in 2003 courtesy of State Senate President Emil Jones. Something on the order of 30 progressive bills that had languished during the 20+ consecutive years the GOP controlled the Governor’s mansion were gift wrapped and handed to Obama by Jones. A then local Chicago reporter asked some veteran black committee chairmen whose name shad been removed from those bills what they thought of this. Obama’s massive temper tantrum at the resulting story suggesting he had done next to nothing to get these bills passed is informative. So is the very low regard of his peers. In 2008 the reporter worked in Houston and wrote about the Barack Obama he knew.

I can’t find a link but from 2008 I recall that Alan Keyes also noted during their 2004 debate that Obama strained to stay under control when Keyes suggested that most of Obama’s accomplishments had been bestowed rather than earned.

Kudos to Art Chance & Subotai Bahadur for their enlightening posts. I’d go on to say that indeed coercive machinations have gone down to ensure that no damaging background info leaks out on Obama (no small wonder now with the way he treats his illegal-alien aunt & poverty-stricken half brother), but beyond that his skin color serves as a nice little forcefield that protects him from scrutiny, lest people on the “attack” be labeled as………*gasp*……..racists.

It all stinks to high heaven. I am utterly disgusted that no one out there has the cajones to really go after this guy & take his ass down. Perhaps that will change in the wake of a 2nd term should he win the election next year (God forbid).

knowing comrade clown’s style shows us what he is all about, and some are working to find out (under the radar) who he really is. sheriff joe in arizona has deputized a posse of retired law enforcement guys to do just that. he said he would issue a report early next year on his findings.

last week his attack dog holder started rumblings of an investigation into civil rights violations by sheriff joe. joe recently got very high marks from the fed on this same subject.

there is his achilles heel. the fact that name calling (birther, tea bagger, etc.) pulled the eye away from it last time around demonstrates what exactly? everybody’s past is fair game but his? nobody can break the law but his people? people are murdered (fast and furious) and for obvious sinister reasons, he seals the file of the dead man?

i don’t know what it is that causes folks to quit asking questions. stupidity? fear? desire to fit in? shame? whatever it is, we need to dump it.

Obama’s SAT scores are, apparently, simply not available to the public. But I found this list of famous people’s SATs on “college confidential” — supposedly in turn from the Powerscore SAT-training website (which I could not confirm.)
Anyway:

Paul Allen: 1600
Microsoft co-founder

Bill Gates: 1590
Microsoft co-founder

Bill O’Reilly: 1585
Political commentator and host of The O’Reilly Factor

Obama is only a good teleprompter reader and no more! We have seen his supposed “brilliance ” in so many instances over the last three years that it makes me wonbder if he is dumb as a door nail along with his worshipers in the media.

The One got in because everyone was bone tired of Bush, even Bush’s supporters. Barry was eloquent (at least when he had his prompter), elegant, and hip… everything Bush wasn’t. Even better he was remained a blank slate that others could project their imagination on.

I don’t understand Obama’s appeal either. The only people who could believe he was a genius are those who consider liberal opinions a sufficient proof of high intelligence. Apparently, this includes much of the country… (Something similar is at work in those who insist that Ron Paul–a hate-filled village idiot–is actually intelligent).

But then again, I didn’t understand the enthusiasm among Republicans, however fleeting, for Rick Perry or Herman Cain. Or, for that matter, for Sarah Palin. They were all obviously unqualified to be anywhere near the presidency.

VDH – every time we vicariously (through you) examine this president we see another facet of this man. What is troubling is what we find beyond the face he puts to the world. This man is rotten to the core. His casual flip-off of Hilary Clinton – or his callous reminder to McCain of ‘I won’ should have been a red flag to the leftists/statists of what we and they were in for.

Unfortunately love is blind. Too bad stupidity has come along for the ride.

If you all think Obama is the problem in Washington, take a look at the new
1 Trillion spending bill Congress just passed. REPUBLICAN AND DEMOCRAT spending
projects, big Pork projects by both parties.
Obama is just the latest big spender to appear on the Washington scene.
Hejust happens to be the most Liberal and least prepared to be POTUS.
take a look at your Congressman and senator. The majority are part of the system of big Government and Big Spending programs.
The one constant is that all of the elite political class, they are all liars
and cheaters. To the last man or woman.

I eagerly await every article by VDH. Even when I do not agree with him on rare occasions, I think his analysis is nevertheless, brilliant. This is the scariest article he has written that I have read to date. I fear somewhere in his subconscious VDH is dredging up the historical parallel to this dreadful man Obama and the outcome for the world was not pretty then and will not pretty for us later. Obama is the most un-American pResident I have seen in my short 60 years. Those that are calling him Dear Leader do so rightly. VDH please give us an action plan.

I disagree with the assessment that Obama is consciously manipulative. Obama is a pathological narcissist. He’s always believed he is who the press and his people portrayed him as being. Ultimately, that’s the problem. He truly believes that he’s the political equivalent of Jesus Christ, but he has no agenda. He believes that his presence alone will inspire people to solve problems. This is why he’s so detached–he really believed that if he brought Senate and House leaders together, they would magically come to consensus due to his presence.

This complete lack of agenda meant that his followers and the press would see in him whatever they wanted to see. This was readily apparent early in his presidential campaign where supporters and the press would all said completely contradictory things about him.

One problem with someone like this is that they don’t care what other people think to a degree that normal people simply can’t fully understand it.

The bigger problem is that when intelligent Machiavellian-minded political operatives find someone like this, they can very easily exploit them, make this person their front man and pretty much have impunity behind the scenes with little accountability (with the added bonus of the presidential pardon.)

(Unfortunately, the Republicans have their own convenient, charismatic idiots as well. The end result WILL be the same since the operatives care only about power; most aren’t even that ideological inside and greed is important only inasmuch as money gives them more power.)

The greatest mistake Republicans can, and will make, it to underestimate just how powerful a completely amoral narcissist is. What will defeat him is not ideology, policy, grand ideas, but [relatively] humble morality from someone who isn’t otherwise a lunatic. (Relative since we are talking about politicians here.)

Good outline. But I’d add that although Obama doesn’t care what other people think, just as he himself has no thoughts – he does care that they are in His control. He needs that sense of domination over others; that’s a basic characteristic of a pathological narcissist. If he has no control over them, those people simply cease to exist – as humans, as people.

Feel better now that you have gotten all that out of your systems? You guys do go on and on and on and on with the same old fanciful stuff. It’s almost like chanting over and over, “Kill the pig, Cut his throat.” This is the guy that you have to beat in 2012, and by golly, you have just beaten the snot out of him and left him for dead! Poor Piggy. ;-)

After absorbing all of the above, I can’t tell if he is a real person with an interesting, if mysterious rise to the top or some sort of demonic figure. Play around with his name and maybe you (or Michelle Bachman) can come up with a 666! Yes, he seems somewhat aloof and stiff at times, but pleasant enough around real people. Do any of us know how he acts with the people he plays golf and b-ball with? Never mind, just make up a lot of stuff.

But I’ll bet you didn’t know know that the guy who appeared on O’Reilly without a teleprompter and more than held his own was actually a robot, made to look like Obama? There are actually twenty or thirty of these droids and Bill Ayers and David Axelrod, and Rahm Emmanuel each have four or five of them in their closet, which are programmed to do different things; there’s one for basketball, one for golf, and one for the Whitehouse Easter Egg hunt. There is also a narcissist robot that they occasionally send out to plague ETAB.

Dwight, every once in awhile I allow myself to actually engage you as if you were a rational human being, then I remind myself that you’re either a fellow traveller or, more likely, a useful idiot. The man is a communist apparatchik who fronts for a cabal put together by Soros and some really murky others. If you don’t believe in Red Diaper Babies or understand how deeply penetrated US institutions have been, you realy should have overcome your government school indoctrination. Flash, painful flash, for you: Joe McCarthy was right! We didn’t kill, imprison, or deport nearly enough of them in the late ’40s and ’50s, so either they’re going to win, or we’re going to do it right this time. To borrow a little Heinlein, it’s time to go get some bugs!

And possibly you are a dancing slave your own political reflexes. Check out the Goldman – Friedman thread, which actually turns into a reasonably intelligent discussion of issues in the engineering field. The issue, as always, arises, of students taking dumbed-down course. Topics that permit people to ramble on about Obama’s bizarre “flaws” are dumbed-down threads, because they permit everyone to spout whatever hare-brained hostility for him they think, feel, or intuit. People with more creativity are given higher-grades.

Is there a left in American politics? Yes. Are they the tools of the Arch-Angel Lucifer? Well, they might be; let’s hear the readers free-associate to that possibility and pass it off as political analysis.

No, Dwight, unlike you, I’m not a slave to my biases. Do you even realize it when you reflexively go to the two standard lefty memes, ignorance and religion? Flash: leftist and intelligent are not synonyms. Flask: Religious and ignorant are not synonyms. Flash: Religious and conservative are not synonyms. Now I know those ideas mess up some fundamental lefty biases, but they’re true.

As to my opinion of Comrade Obama, I’ve held it since I first saw him give his “coming out” speech as a rising Democrat star. I said to myself, “I know you; you’re the one they think they can dress up and pass off as a moderate.” I’ve dealt with people like him and the iteration before him for a living since AFSCME first invaded my state in ’88 looking to buy a US Senate seat. They saw that at the time Alaska had the two cheapest seats in the Senate. Typical lefties, what they didn’t consider was that they were cheap because nobody had ever tried to bid against the oil industry for one of them. They spent a lot of money wining and dining idiots and malcontents, we had a Democrat governor so the employer didn’t effectively oppose them, and they wound up representing our largest unit of State employees. They sent out a motley crew of sociopaths, malcontents, and leftover ’60s SDSers as organizers and sent a similarly constituted bunch from their DC office to bargain with us once they were certified.

I’ll admit to having been intimidated at first as we’d dealt mostly with our homegrown employee associations and only our labor, trades, and crafts and marine employees were AFL-CIO affiliated. The AFL-CIO units could be nasty and avaricious but were rational and practical. AFSCME changed all that. We quickly learned that they were show and bombast and had little skill at actual collective bargaining. Their reps were arrogant, smug, and condescending. At first I thought the condescension was a DC thing because I’d seen similar behavior in Beltway Bandit types and DC staffers, but I learned it was the affect they’re all taught at the Meany School and the other outfits that turn out union and community organizer types including private and public universities that offer a labor studies curriculum or a battery of course work in community organizing and political action. Not surprisingly, several of their high-level apparatchiks were from Hahvud Law. Most of the senior labor relations staff were ‘Boomers and we were fairly familiar with the SDS and with Marx and Lenin, Trotsky, Mao, and the tactics of various communist revolutionaries, so with a little thought the patterns began to emerge. Before long Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals” was as much a part of our tactical battery as Elkouri’s “How Arbitration Works” and Hardin’s “The Developing Labor Law.” As we learned just how bad they were at actual bargaining, grievance handling, and general employee representation, we learned that they really only saw the collective bargaining part as politics by other means. They took every grievance to arbitration, and it didn’t seem to much bother them to lose because they saw it all as an organizing process based on constant conflict and confrontation. Contract negotiations were initiated by an inflamatory press release or press conference with one of their slick reps and a backdrop of loyal idiots and malcontents, sound familiar? If they made proposals at all they were pie in the sky, so vague as to be incomprehensible, calculated to make the idiots and malcontents salivate, and to make the employer reject them out of hand. Of course, as soon as the employer rejected them out of hand, there was a screaming press release, editorials by their lefty lapdogs in the media, and threats to shutdown the government, sound familiar? They then begin a grievance campaign in which they personalize the dispute to certain supervisors and managers and demonize them with press releases, polls about their managment style, singing songs and carrying signs in front of their office, their boss’s office and sometimes their homes, sound familiar? They call it mau-mauing them, remember the Mau-Mau? Remember what political philosophy they were aligned with? Well, some of us were old enough and studied enough to remember how the CIA dealt with the Viet Cong’s use of the Mau-mau tactics and for every time they demonized a supervisor or manager, we took out an activist or shop steward. Took them almost two years and nearly $20 Million to get their first very paltry contract, a contract they’d have never gotten if we hadn’t had a Democrat governor; typically, he saved them. They did buy themselves a governor and put a price on our heads that they never actually collected by having us fired, though they were able to have most of us pushed away from the front lines in labor relations for awhile. Rather than accept that, I went to work for the Republican-led Legislature with their misery as my mission. Between the Legislature torturing the Administration and the unions’ insatiable demands and disruption, the Democrats actually hired me back to the Executive Branch to clean up the mess they’d made. They never did get their Senator, at least not on my watch and when they made their best effort in ’04, I was director of labor relations and come election time, they were quietly under contract rather than out in the streets singing songs and carrying signs to whip up a frenzy for their candidate. With the help of the USDOJ, the Democrats finally did get a Senator, Begich, but he’s more the Building Trades’ water boy than the public employee unions’, and he’ll have one term.

So, no, Dwight, I’m not dancing with my biases; I know them. I know what they’re going to do and say before they do. There are smug, condescending “educated” punks like Comrade Obama in practically every public employee union office, some of the industrial unions from the old CIO like IAM and UAW, and in most of the Democrat front groups. They’re all communists, mostly Alinsky disciples, and some of them even know it; certainly Comrade Obama does since he’s a Red Diaper Baby who spent his whole life surrounded by open, avowed communists. He, like all the other ones, is a one-trick pony whose tactics require a pig-ignorant “proletariat,” slavishly loyal fellow travellers and useful idiots in the leadership cohort, and an opponent stupid enough to do what Alinsky says they’re supposed to do. Once you figure out what you’re dealing with and refuse to do what they want you to do, they’re easy to deal with. When you don’t over-react or cower in fetal position from their threats and give them what they want, they do ever crazier things to try to get attention and to get you to do what they want. Frustrate them enough and they’ll do or say something stupid and radical enough that you can whack them. Along the way you take out any of their followers who give you the opportunity so everybody understands that being a punk and a malcontent following the union has a price. Once I was back in the Executive Branch in a position of authority, I went on a “search and destroy” mission against the loud-mouths and activists and by the time I was director under a Republican Governor things were so peaceful I was bored and finished out my career as ROAD staff – Retired On Active Duty. But, for the right Governor, or especially the right President, I’d saddle up for another search and destroy mission.

Wow! You are competing with (and are now in the lead) ETAB to become the Polonius of PJM. ;-)

Apparently you have dealt with a number of people about whom you have very strong opinions, and all these people you have dealt with somehow fall neatly (hundreds of words later) into some Marxian-ignorant category, especially when faced with your trenchant powers of er, exactly what? Once you get going you just can’t stop, which doesn’t prove much other than that you can’t stop.

And I love the line, “So, no, Dwight, I’m not dancing with my biases; I know them.” Your biases? Well, what are they?

@Dwight – Dwight, you bore me. Sometimes when I respond it is just for others that might be reading; I know nothing is going to change the “feelings” of a lefty useful idiot like you. You’re a nothing that has done nothing as regards the political world. You were what? Oh, a school principal, just about the least accountable job in the Country, only your subordinate teachers have less. Education degrees go to the least capable students outside the athletic department and until recently, and then only in some states, Ed Majors had the GERs in subject matter and the rest was pedagogy; how to teach stuff they didn’t know. You’re like one of those people somebody was talking about in the education thread; you’re facile, but you don’t actually know how to do anything or how anything really works. You come here and do your version of “speaking truth to power” by trying to show all us Neaderthals how smart you are. Sorry, Dwight, having the lefty talking points down and being able to use them in not very clever repartees doesn’t make you smart, being credentialed doesn’t make you educated; in fact it is almost contraindicative. And typically, you didn’t address a damned thing about what I said, you have no rebuttal to my characterization of a major component of your side of the ditch and your Dear Leader, you just acted like the smartass punk that in your world passes for being bright and clever.

Pick It Fence But, can you point out a specific error in Dr. Hanson’s article? Where the raw data he presents is false, or incorrect? Not the conclusions he draws, but just the information as given.

And a sad state of affairs, where the Ping Pong Tongue in the past would wax on about Hamilton’s bunions, and whether or not John Adams drank cider every morning. Now we have a “glib” Red Pencil Neck “foaming” out lazy “blathered” comments in tune with hunting and his latest North Korean like obsessions.

That’s right D-White, never face what Mr. President is. That’s tantamount to giving aid to the Enemy.

“You’re a nothing that has done nothing as regards the political world.” Ah yes, which would apply to most of the folks around here, who are supposedly real folks, not political operatives, appointees, whatever.

And from outside the classroom, one can generalize or imagine anything they want about teachers and department heads, which is what I was, not a principal. There can, as in anything, be abuses and incompetence, but there can also be excellence. You have your students every day; you know if you are doing badly, and they also know. It is what it is, and you supposedly know all about it…from a distance.

From your “real world” experience, we are supposed to believe that all Democrats you crossed paths with were red diaper, Alinskyite, frauds and incompetents, and you want to take hundreds of words and more hundreds of words to tell us that.

Typical stupid Democrat, Dwight. I know, you’re not used to that; Democrats are the smart people – ‘Cause the professor told you so. Nowhere did I say that “all” Democrats were any of those things. Most of them are pig-stupid dependents of government. Most of the rest are useful idiots like you. I actually kinda like some of the committed communists, Alinsky disciples, and the like, the apparatchik level; they’re good for a reasonably rational discussion over a few beers The ones I really can’t effin’ stand, and you come perilously close to being one, are the carin’ and sharin’ and feelin’ emotional types who just want the world to be a better place, as they define better of course, and who haven’t an effin’ clue.

Oh, and I did a bit of bargaining with NEA teachers; bunch of idiots at collective bargaining, but they’re pretty good at buying school boards.

Hanson is glib. He can slice and dice anyone. He does it quite nicely with Republicans too, thank you, including Mitt and Newt.
Anybody who thinks Obama is dumb or inept should go read his “A More Perfect Union” speech, largely written by him. And then take a look at his Osowatamie speech (appealing to Theodore Roosevelt and also largely self-written) and watch his almost simultaneous 60 minutes interview with Kroft: Nary a teleprompter in sight, yet brilliantly and masterfully handled by the President.
Those alone are three good reasons why this capable man is going to be reelected.

I’ve written prepared talks I’ve given myself many times, yet I don’t claim to be brilliant.

Many comedians write their own material but they don’t claim to be Presidential material.

To repeat: Obama definitely can express himself, either during an interview or in writing. But *what* he expresses is notable for its utter lack of brilliance.

I’m still waiting for some Democrat like yourself to point to even ONE idea that Obama has proposed that is truly brilliant, rather than being standard Democratic party boilerplate that could just as easily have come from Pelosi or Hillary.

“When I use a word, it means what I choose it to mean”.. (Humpty Dumpty). That is, it has NO reference to reality, and only means what its ‘user’ chooses it to mean.

And will you then, add your own meaning to those words? Of course, since you too are a nominalist…and you’ll believe ‘as many as six impoossible things before breakfast’.

What Obama writes, is utterly irrelevant, and has as much reference to reality as ‘Twas brillig and the slighty toads did gire and gimbol in the wade’.

The problem, which you are ignoring, is Obama’s actions; his real actions, and they are, with reference to his past, utterly hidden, and with reference to his present, openly disastrous for the economic and societal well-being of the nation.

His words? He contradicts his words, day be day, with each speech – as ponted out by VDH. A speech on day two will contradict a speech on day one. An action on day three will contradict the two former days. When we wonder – why – we come up with a requirement to focus only on his actions and ignore the fluff of his words. His actions are consistent – anti-business, anti-freedom, statist socialism. Think about that.

He has written almost nothing in his life. He is said to have written some columns when he was a legislator in Chicago, but they don’t seem to have been published anywhere. Strange, no? One would think they would be studied now in universities around the world. But no, they can’t seem to be found.

There are two poems attributed to him. One, about apes, is laughably juvenile and stupid. The other is rather sophisticated. The suspicion is it was written by Frank Davis Marshall about his relationship with Obama.

There are two pieces that nobody questions were written by him. The first was an article in a broadsheet from his Columbia days that any leftist college student could have written. The other is a letter written as the elected editor of the Harvard review refuting another student who had the audacity to challenge affirmative action. It is thoroughly embarassing for any graduate level student, contains several grammatical errors and faulty logic. Clearly, getting an affirmative action pass into Harvard didn’t grant him any magical writing skills.

But it’s not just that, he doesn’t even put a good chain of thought together unless the teleprompter is directing him. Since he started running for president, people aren’t even allowed to ask him anything that would reveal his inablity to say anything other than pre-scripted platitudes. That’s why the totus goes wherever he goes. He even uses it when talking to grade school students.

So imagining that he writes any of his speeces is silly. The man can’t put two words together without embarrassing himself.

The Greek columns in Denver, the promise to personally stem rising tides, the declaration that proper tire inflation would solve our energy problems, the barely veiled (and not so veiled) insults to Americans (from both Obamas)…

And one thing in particular, post-election a pièce de résistance, when Obama gratuitously told John McCain during pretend discussions with Republicans prior to the jamming through of “healthcare”…

“The election’s over John. You lost.”

As has been mentioned above, it won’t be pretty when we say the same thing to him.

Just a quick note to exclaim – great insights everyone!! What a pleasure it is to come here each week, it gives one hope!…

Merry Christmas to all, and a special thanks to Prof. Hanson for his brilliant, valiant efforts; and for giving us this space to congregate in.

Here’s hoping that 2012 won’t be as turbulent as many of us fear; but that regardless, we will find the courage and resolve to do what we must to make sure that Obama is a one term president, and that the trend towards oligarchy, “coercive collectivism” and dictatorship is reversed.

VDH! You nailed the analogy in Pecos Bill. Not many would recall Pecos.
He was raised by the wolves and emerged from nowhere. Hero to the masses, Pecos could lasso a twister so effortlessly that he could smoke while doing so.

Obama supporters are not just Liberal..These people acually want a Communist Country..Obama = Communism..Gingrich = worse..Ron Paul has a video out that explains his Foriegn Policy..It seems Even Intelligent Americans don’t Understand it..It not Complex..I urge you to go to ronpaul2012.com and watch his Video on Foriegn Policy…I was watching a Video on the Queen of England giving orders really..She said and i quote: We must keep up all the Terrorism to secure the worlds Natural Resources for our Future.” Then she said ” We also need to deport the mentally handicapped”..Ron Paul gets more money from Our Military and Our troops Around the World ,More than all the Canadates Combined ..He even gets more than Obama..Our Troops don’t Believe in What they are doing and We the American people are being lied to about what we are doing..We set up Al-Kaida in Lybia? We are over throughing all these heads of state? Now we are in 5 Countries in Africa? We are Bombing Uganda , Pakistan, Yemen, Iraq, Afganistan, Sudan,Egypt, Syria..Now they want to blow up Iran?..They also want to bring Saudi Arabia down..most of these countries had peace treaties with Israel our allies and they are being replaced with Anti Israeli and Anti American forces..Ask yourselves why?..We are Stealing thier Natural Resources along with Britain , France and the Netherlands..Its time America wakes up !!!..Look at this situation..Our troops want no part of this they want to come home!!!…The only person that will bring them home is Ron Paul and they know it..Why doesn’t everyone know this?..Do some research for goodness sakes and make a stand..Lets Bring our troops home..Why should our Military be spilling thier blood so the Elite can Steal all the worlds Natural resources?..Again go to ronpaul2012.com watch his Video on his foriegn policy and watch these wars closley..We have no Buisness being in these countries..we need to mind our own Business ..Drill for our own oil and Natral gas..Open up our oil refineries ..Bring Our Troops home..Stop the Nation Building which is just making Haleberton Rich owned by Cheny..We need to stop all foriegn aid ..We are Bankrupt..When we get back on our feet and Americans have jobs then maybe we can help others.We need to make sure it goes to help the poor in these countries not to prop up thier dictators.We have to borrow money from China to give it to dictators around our world?..Something has to give..We give Israel 3 Billion dollars a Year but we give Israel’s enemies Twice that much..If we can’t stand up for our Troops what in the heck good are We?
They think Americans are so stupid..Washinton belives we are stupid..Well this sleeping Giant is waking up..We don’t like what we see and niether does our military..Get off ur duff and get involved..There are people who make things Happen, those who watch things happen and those who wonder what in the heck Happened..By time we get to what in the Heck Happened..We will have no Constitution ..It just barley on life support now..We will become another Soviet Union..In fact the police here are terrorists..Even cops in China don’t act like the cops here..They went against the Posse cumatatas act and made our Military work and trian officers who are suposed to be peace keepers not Jack booted thugs..ronpaul2012.com We can make the right choice this time ..Bring Our troops Home..Gard our own borders and give incentives to entreprnuership and small buisness and get America Thriving again..Lets not leave this mess to our children and Grandchildren Ron Paul 2012 We can make it happen!

Wow – that’s quite the rant. You’re the one who needs to do some research.

Do you seriously believe that the Queen of the UK, Canada, Australia, etc actually said, much less ordered, the deportation of the ‘mentally handicapped’? Or that ‘we’ should take other countries’ natural resources?
Unbelievable. That fact that you would actuall believe that she made such statements shows that you are gullible enough to believe whatever fictional nonsense is thrown at you.

And that goes for Cheny and Halliburton and all the garbage about ‘stealing their natural resources’. Ever heard of the market and ever wondered how those ME nations and govt, with all their oil, have become so very rich? Do you ever think about the cost of oil?

I’d also do a bit of work on your spelling. Oh, and I repeat,your claim that the Queen of the Br. Commonwealth actually made those statements reveals a mindset and critical thinking capacity that has been long overthrown and has been, itself, stolen by someone else.

Excellent article. I find it really interesting that not one person has come forward to say that they knew Barry, had class with him, hung with him, or even partied with him. To me this gives credence to the proposition a myth and fraud, as well as inexperienced and incompetent!!

Composing a list of facts regarding Obama’s gaffes and outright lies is fine, and I have read some quite good ones already. The Progressives/Lefties loved the list composed for W. These lists and expose’s only seem to work for their respective party’s base and maybe a few independents. One HUGE advantage Obama has over conservatives and Republicans is his sides ability to psychologically manipulate the public. He has Hollywood and any number of left wing Psychologists and so forth to plan and implement. Progressives, Marxists, and Communists study ways to manipulate and control the public to do their bidding, i.e. “useful idiots” etc.. Obama can say practically any lie, or make any just plain wrong assertion and get away with it. One thing I haven’t read much about is who would be the best going head to head with Obama in the staged debates that will occur just before the election. Remember Al Gore hovering over W? Unfortunately, I think the election will come down to just one of these sorts of moments.

I think when people believe Barack Obama is some kind of genius it is because subconsciously they are linking him, on some level, to an image similar to Frank Abingnale (Catch me if you can), where he is smart enough to bullshit his way to the top, and the mind simply sees that as impressive.

Richard Epstein is the James Parker Hall Distinguished Service Professor of Law at the University of Chicago, where he has taught since 1972. He was a colleague of Barack Obama when Obama taught as an instructor. Epstein had mutual friends with Obama, and talked to Obama about some issues. His main description is that Obama is under complete self-control

“Obama worked as a community organizer and was in many cases very constructive. He organized public/private partnerships to help the homeless and downtrodden.”

“But, the difficulty you get, for someone who has only worked in that situation, is that he believes the creation of private wealth is something the government cannot influence or destroy. He has many fancy redistribution schemes, in addition to his health plan and new labor laws, which are all wealth killers.”

“The fundamental mistake of his entire world view is that he treats contracts as devices for exploitation and not as devices for mutual gain, and he assumes that redistribution can take place without any negative impact upon production.”

= =Robinson: Would you ever give him tenure at the University of Chicago Law School?

Epstein: No, no, no. We did not give Obama a tenured offer. Obama was such an engaging fellow, that we all would have offered him a tenured track position [not tenured, but leading to tenure if the work is high quality]. But, Obama realized that he was not cut out for an academic career. It wasn’t what he wanted.
= =

When God talks to you through your inner voice, it is better than prayer. Obama experiences this every day, in his own words, revealed in a March 2004 interview with a reporter on religious issues. Obama declares his submision to God, and further claims to have a daily conversation.

That’s correct. And he never wrote an artile for the review or editted one. Interesting, eh?

The only comment that I’ve heard about his “tenure” as “editor” is that he would prance into the offices of the editors from time to time to make a few proclamations and then prance back out in a few minutes later. No time for the little people engaged in the busy work of writing stuff that wasn’t about him.

I always liked that quote from “The Man who Shot Liberty Valance”/ Great article and exceptional commentary by Art, CF Proreason, ETAB etc. My issue is, we understand the problem, but living in a deep blue state, I have no idea how to effectively deprogram the willfully ignorant that are all around me. I’ve tried. It is very depressing, given that we are fast approaching the point of no return (if we haven’t already reached it).

Ah, the Hoover Institute. Thant answers my question, Hanson does get paid for writing such bullshit. The reality is . . . . . .Obama has accomplished more, helped more Americans, in his first term than RR, GHWB, and GWB combined. Deal with it Mr. Hanson!

I think Comrade Lenin had it perfectly right for the kinds of people who blindly followed the Bolsheviks and actually believed that just saying they were a majority made it so. Likewise, it is a perfectly apt description of the fools that follow Comrade Obama. Some of us even remember when “progressive” was a word for polite company that was used as a synonym for communist and to the truly initiated it was a word for a close fellow traveller that would be a member but for their position and the great services to the Party that actually being a member might interfere with. See, you must know, though I don’t expect you to understand, that there are those of us on the other side of the political ditch who know you and your leaders far, far better than you useful idiot followers know them.

For a moment let’s concede that Obama is as brilliant as his supporters state. Since “brilliance” hasn’t worked so well perhaps we can have a president with common sense next time around. Obama is certainly lacking in that regard.

You really have to wonder why Obama won’t share his college transcripts. After 3 years of exposure to Obama levels of Arrogance and Ego it certainly can’t be modesty. And Obama’s first 3 years certainly haven’t been brilliant. We’ve never had such a failure of Presidential Leadership, nor so much debt and damage inflictedon our nation in such a shot period of time. Assuming Obama’s intent wasn’t to inflict so much debt and damage than brilliance is not the term. Someday in the future when we have the full story on Obama, that we normally get during a primary or generally election campaign, we will likely find that the Democratic party and the Mainstream media have foisted one of the greatest frauds in history on our nation!

2008 *was* a fluke / a glitch in the (political) system. Obama never paid his dues. There was *no* crawlin, walkin and then runnin (punned on purpose). He cut corners and all that (with the help of MSM and Ted Kennedy). And, now America is payin the price for it. I warned everyone back in 2008. But, alas, no one listened (racist, racist! I know)

President’s are never smart enough for pinheads. The fact that they make it to the Presidency is proof enough of their smarts. Was FDR smart? Truman? Ike? Kennedy? LBJ? Nixon? Ford? Reagan??? W.? Do the math?

Obama has managed to lead the country through some rough times and he has not made things WORSE. W. got us into two wars (cost over 5000 lives and at least one trillion dollars thus far); he led the economy to the greatest collapse since the great depression; generally trashed the American image abroad; alienated our allies; trashed liberties at home via the patriot act; made things worse during Katrina; and was generally an incompetent lout. At least Obama has not done that VDH.

“Clinton was a browser with a near photographic memory who had pretensions of deeply-read wonkery; but he nonetheless browsed.”

Clinton did more than browse, he also had real experience governing a state. Obama has never run anything in his life, nothing but talk. I didn’t either like or trust Clinton, but I must at least admit he was a competant politician. I agree that Obama is an empty suit, brilliant at nothing other than reading speeches at a teleprompter, and promissing the moon, knowing he could never deliver. Today, now that the people are on to him, and his numerous broken promisses, even his vaunted speechmaking is no longer very brilliant. When was the last time Obama ever gave a speech that actually moved the electorate.

This quote does not correctly apply to Obama. In the movie, Jimmy Stewarts Liberty Valence legend was false, with John Wayne being the real hero there. But his later achievements, as governor and senator, were quite real, and earned. Thus the newspaperman rightly declared that Stewarts subsequent real achievements rendered the falseness of his original legend moot.

The is not the case with Obama. In his case, his original legend, made in the 2008 campaign, was false like the movie, but his subsequent conduct has proved the legend to be false, unlike the movie where the legend was at least partly validated by later positive acheivements. Thus a better saying for Obama is “When the legend is proven to be false, hope the leftist media continues to print the legend, and hope enough of the rubes still beleive the legend.”

If I were a Republican I would would be mighty insulted at the cast of characters who are hoping to secure the Republican nomination. Did it ever occur to you that the greatest asset of the Republican party is the ignorance of its’ base? Just look at the idiocy of Perry, Cain and Bachmann and the total condescension of Gingrich. How are you not infuriated???? You can make fun of Obama but how about George W. Bush and his malaprops (look it up) This man who got into Yale on the back of daddy’s alumni contributions. Did you ever ask for Bush’s transcripts or were you too afraid of what you would find? Hypocrisy, thy name is Republican.

If I were a Republican I would would be mighty insulted at the cast of characters who are hoping to secure the Republican nomination. Did it ever occur to you that the greatest asset of the Republican party is the ignorance of its’ base? Just look at the idiocy of Perry, Cain and Bachmann and the total condescension of Gingrich. How are you not infuriated???? You can make fun of Obama but how about George W. Bush and his malaprops (look it up) This man who got into Yale on the back of daddy’s alumni contributions. Did you ever ask for Bush’s transcripts or were you too afraid of what you would find? Hypocrisy, thy name is Republican.

Idiot lefty child, we don’t need to look up malaprop. Some of us even come from a heritage where people read rather than browsed and texted and remember Dickens’ Mrs. Malprop. I know your teachers/professors told you that being a lefty made you smart, but, sorry, out in the cruel world, it doesn’t. Your mastery of lefty talking points, preferred insults to conservatives, even a degree in Angry People Studies from the finest school still just makes you a useful idiot.

Your nastiness just proves that the Republican base is filled with the vicious and unintelligent, those completely incapable of answering in a calm, clear manner. Just look at the candidates up for the Rep. candidacy. The fact that the GOP can bulldoze so many into believing that they give a damn for anyone but the super wealthy says it all.

Passive aggressive ignorant tool. You really don’t demonstrate much intelligence yourself. Individually, those you lambaste on this site, with little more than claims, have more intelligence than all you U.I. trolls collectively. When you actually learn how things work in the real world, come back with a substantive argument.

No, idiot lefty child, we’re not unintelligent and, just for the record, lefty and intelligent are not synomyms. Some of us are indeed vicious, and many more of us are becoming that way because we’ve had it with lefty idiots like you and the communist pied pipers to whom you’re useful.

I don’t blame Obama or the democrats… Or the main-stream media… The only entity that I blame is the total ignorance of the US Electorate. I know a lot of dead people in Illinois “voted” for Obama (and I’m sure many more will rise from the dead to pull the lever for him again in 2012) but the fact of the matter is that our country is in trouble… BIG Trouble… and, it is NOT due to the Democrats. It is due to stupid people not taking the time to think… actually THINK before they vote. We are on the road to ruin because there are so many STUPID people who actually go to the polls and vote. What a SAD state of affairs for what was once a great country! I weep for the USA.
JR

I come to this discussion rather late. We’ll see how many others follow. Mr. Hanson, I have read your work on the internet and usually you are quite logical in your arguments. I have used your essay “Is Sky Falling on America?” in my classes.

The problem with this piece, though, is that every accusation you level at Obama could be leveled ten-fold at the current Republican field for president (with the possible exception of Ron Paul, who has other issues). Hypocrisy runs rampant in our politics today, on all sides. Money has totally corrupted our process, at every level.

More than money in politics, though, we in the US are faced with an existential crisis that we are ill-equipped to confront. Where are the jobs of the future going to come from? We have off-shored our manufacturing capacity to China, etc., we are cutting back the public sector due to state financial crises, and no one believes that government should provide anything–not jobs, not housing, not medical care. Cutting taxes seems to be the only common belief of present-day Republicans. That and supporting the military–heaven help us when taxes become so low that the military is no longer sacrosanct. Last one left please turn out the lights.

Jobs are created when a person or group of people develop a product or service that other people are willing to buy.

When you have 1000 million brain-dead people groveling at the government trough, that’s when no new jobs are created. And stupid bureaucrats proclaiming that people must buy stuff that people don’t want doesn’t work either.

New jobs will be created when the government stops paying people for doing nothing and stops telling people how to live their lives, not before.

..i can prove to you obama is an idiot…..2010 election….no chess player gives up his queen…he went communist too fast,he didn’t see the tea party coming.he lost the house..now he’s sucking air the rest of hs term……he’s a clown, in 57 states.

It’s clear he doesn’t know how to play chess…it’s also clear that he is very careful to make sure any decision he makes is hedged with blame shifting in play. Chess is too straightforward and transparent.

This embarrassingly bad article is more or less one lengthy ad hominem attack. The argument essentially boils down to: “I don’t know the specific juicy details that I want to know about Barack Obama.” What’s even worse is that some of the points are good, but ruined by poor logic and lack of attention to detail. It is true that Obama has abandoned some of his campaign promises, but it is also true that he has done so in the face of a hostile opposition that has been clear that it’s goal is not the success of the nation but the failure of the president. Obama, as we know by his own admission, IS a sometimes smoker, which makes the author’s bizarre and pointless comment about his smoking and other health habits not just stupid, but confusing to boot.

Ultimately, the “problem” with Barack Obama as a president is that he has chosen to respect the separation of powers and stay within the bounds of the executive branch that were set in place by the Constitution. So, to the author: stop wasting your time speculating about things that you cannot and have no need to know, and start addressing the fundamental political problems that prevent our leaders from getting important things done without violating the separation of powers (as Bush and countless other presidents have done).

excellent column. it’s high time more commentators started taking apart this arrogant, delusional, impostor. like most americans, i was more than willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. with his dictatorial tone, immediate leftward lurch, arrogant and secretive administrative posture, et al, he lost me within months. and now, three years later, most of the rational electorate has followed suit. only his acolytes, the young, the “progressive” (speaks for itself), the minority vote, this is all that remains of his “coalition.”

when he’s gone, there will be much rejoicing in the land, with damn good reason….

How can WE pick who’s going to lead our country rather that the choices the parties give us. Seems a though is voting for the lesser of two evils. The matchup of an old guy and almost a bimbo wasn’t really a good choice. I believe the Republicans gave that election away more so than Obama winning it. How can we suggest to the parties to run someone likehttp://www.buddyroemer.com/meet-buddy. This guy limits his campaign contributions to $100 and has experience. Why can’t we make all contributions go to a general fund to be used equally among all candiadates? That way there shouldn’t be any “bought and paid for” elections where the winner is bound to do favors or look the other way to special interest groups. Seems our political system has gotten away from “for the people” to “FOR THER CLUB or ” ruling elite.”

Thank you Victor Hanson!
This is the clearest, best written article on the obama sham that duped so many. You have put into words basically each instance in which I felt cognitive dissonance — from all the mean, cynical speeches to their complete disconnect to his behavior. When someone’s words and his actions do not cohere,you pay attention to the behavior. this man was wholly unvetted and he himself seems to relish his ‘outhustle’ on americans themselves. he is the biggest crony of them all. i too will vote for whoever is not him.

Victor is ususally quite objective in his writing, but I sense a lot of Republican talking points in the article that smacks of something else. The real hypocrisy does not lay totally with the young Obama who came to office believing his own ideals as reflected in American values. It did not occur to him that the politics of the nation was DIFFERENT than what he believed in. He did not entertain the thought that Republicans say one thing and do another, even on critical issues like the debt ceiling. So the crucial thing in evaluating Obama’s genius is not to compare it with his results, largely obfuscated by a hypocritical system that PARADES itself as of, by, and for the the people, but to able to still STAND in the midst of so much claptrap and gives a HIGH degree of Personal integrity to his own ideals that were shaped by the TRUEST AMERICAN IDEALS. To still believe in them after all the dung he has been through is the stuff that legends are made of.

And good thing for Comrade Obama that there are lots of useful idiots like you. His Presidency is graphic evidence that at least 52% of the electorate has reached a medieval level of ignorance and superstition.

No, lefty idiot, it isn’t because he’s Black, it is because he’s Red. And just for the record, leftist and smart are not synomyms no matter what your government school teachers and professors told you. You idiots have about three talking points and when you’ve used them up all you can do is grunt, point, and drool.

Not one mention about all the states that he wasn’t even on the ballot legally?
I know Alabama requirements were not met, and that several other states would fall under the same problem.
But the system is so corrupt they will tie it in knots, and look the other way in order to keep the crooks in the system to keep the corruption going.

To start, one must not try to equate “smart” with good President. Jimmy Carter is [academically] a smart man, but in my book he is tied with Geotge W. Bush, and Barak Obama for being the worst President the United States ever had. The article speaks of “liberal” views, a totally misused term by “conservatives” (a term misused by liberals,) a misplaced view. Obama failings are due to being a liberal, neither are his flaws due to the fact that he is not smart. Obama problems have to do with his inasbility to be a leader, and with a misplaced ego.

Obama? Unable to find anything intelligent about the man and never have. The only type of intelligence in Barack Obama could be found in criminal activities. Time will show, hopefully sooner than later, that this United States of America has been taken for a fool – unlike any country ever in history and because of the media – Obama accomplished this easily to the most powerful nation on earth. Sad thing is it was easily preventable.

My point? It is almost impossible for Barack Obama to have completed the education he claims – and remain so uninformed about seemingly everything he attempts to do.

I have time to read a lot of blogs and I find way too much concentration on “the man”. I talk to way too many ‘independents’ who say they vote for the candidate not the party…It’s so simple, we are voting for an ideology NOT a personality. Everyone should draw a simple T chart and list the things they like about each party on opposite sides of the line and vote the side that best serves what is valuable to them.

I would vote for any conservative over any liberal regardless of his/her intelligence because I know the real decisions are made by the hundreds of advisors around the elected official (president or congressman). Over the last 60 years I’ve watched the Dems piddle away our financial well being on programs that are never measured for their effectiveness while enjoying the majority of the congressional seats for all but about 10 or 12 years. Meanwhile conservatives attempt to make something work by bending over backwards in compromise that always comes back to bite their butts.

It has been said the difference between a conservative and a liberal is 20 years…but in today’s disinterested electorate the personal interest to study and find the facts is rare and the transformation from starry eyed liberal to a nuts and bolts fiscal conservative may never take place.

Obama was a lecturer in the law at the University of Chicago. The MSM and the pundits have deliberately lied about Obama’s status. He was not a professor. He was not an assistant professor. He was not an adjunct professor. He was a lecturer. The lack of precision and accuracy in the media demonstrates the laziness, the corruptness, the lack of discipline, and the lack of intellect that members of the media demonstrate every single day. The four corners of deceit in the universe of lies remain academia, media, government, and science. And for all of you who stiil believe in Obama, please list his accomplishments. What has he accomplished in his administration? Please tell the rest of us. Please. Liberalism never works. Look at the country. Look at the cities that are controlled by the dems. look at the liberal public policies that have destroyed families, schools, cities, etc. The redistribution of other people’s hard earned wealth will not work.

Obama is simply engaging in the “opiate of the masses”. An activity described by one of his favorite demigods.
If there is a “degree” from any institution, it’s the Honorary Doctorate he received from Reverend Wrights institution of Black Victimhood.
If he could sit there being shouted at by Wright for 20 years and claim he never really heard anything, how could he possibly have heard anything in any classes attended at any educational institution?
I’ll bet they were afraid to mark him absent for threat of being labeled racist.

What he was really doing was sitting in a Democrat patonage position at the University, and practically every publicly funded university in the Country has them, places to keep politicians in waiting, Democrats who’ve lost elections or lost their appointed positions can just go either be administrators or lecturers/instructors/professors at the Democrat run universities.

My state has had a Republican governor, legislature, or both for the last thirty years and yet the Democrats still control the university and a huge percentage of the has-been Democrat officeholders and appointees in the State have sinecures at the university.

Those who make conclusory statements without marshalling the fact based evidence to support their conclusions are undisciplined, simple minded, weak of mind, intellectually deficient, and lazy. Those who declared that Obama was smart, intelligent, etc., have yet to provide any fact based evidence of Obama’s alleged intellect. He has a strange pattern of speech. He hesitates. He pauses. It suggests that he is deep in thought. He is in fact a dunce who cannot speak smoothly and extemporaneously. The transcontinental railroad was built across the USA. Obama declared multiple times that the USA built an “intercontinental railroad.” Really, Mr. Obama. An “intercontinental railraod.” Please tell us all about it. When Bush made such gaffes the press was all over him for years. Obama is a dunce. Plain and simple. His repeated mistakes are evidence of that. By the way how is that “corpseman” doing?

I post this list every once and a while. Hopefully it will catch on by election day.
It is a list of reasons to remove Obama complied by Rabbi Dov Fischer. Feel free to add your own and circulate.
1. Obamacare — Attempting to federalize local state rights, extending federal control over massive components of the national bourse, extending federal control over individuals’ lives in violation of the Constitution’s Commerce Clause. Cynically lining up supporters in white doctors’ robes, while refusing to consult with much more prominent and predominant medical groups who oppose. Lying about the program’s cost and tax burden by subterfuging it with exorbitant taxes that begin several years into its anticipated roll-out. Robbing $500 billion from Medicare that will destroy access for seniors, while lying about the Ryan proposal that would not affect people over 55.
2. The catastrophic $850 billion stimulus. $700,000 to develop a robot that tells jokes. $3.4 million for an underground tunnel for turtles to cross the road in Florida. $1 million to help smokers kick the habit by giving them Blackberry “smartphones.” $2.6 million for Chinese prostitutes in China to drink responsibly. Lying to Americans by claiming the money was going to “shovel-ready jobs” — and then joking about the falsehood. Lying by hiding the amounts transferred to favored liberal projects unrelated to job growth or economic stimulation.
3. Chronically high, persistent unemployment — His own staff said that he would bring it under 8% ; yet it remains over 9% thirty months into his one term, with real unemployment actually exceeding 15% as huge numbers of unemployed Americans withdraw from searching hopelessly for jobs. Lying about a Summer of Recovery (2010).
4. Gas prices — Now exceeding $4.50 a gallon in California, while he bars exploration in ANWR, restricts licenses to explore along the Atlantic coast or in the Gulf, but exports American dollars to help Brazil explore for oil in the Gulf even as Obama promises that America then will buy that oil from Brazil. (See also #82.)
5. Failure to pass a budget. The abject failure by the Chief Executive to get any kind of budget adopted for 2010.
6. Multi-trillion debt free-fall. Turning the disastrous Bush deficits into a multi-trillion-dollar economic free-fall, now leaving the nation with a debt exceeding $14.3 trillion . . . and pressing for authorization to increase the free-fall. His own latest mad deficit proposal was demolished in a House vote 97-318, as his own Democrats abandoned him in droves.
7. The seizure of GM and Chrysler. The illegal transfer of bondholder wealth to unions, imposing his views on parts of the American auto industry, artificially trying to jump-start his favored companies with “Cash for Clunkers,” only to find that American tax dollars were used instead by people buying preferred Japanese cars to acquire them cheaper while being forced to destroy throughly sound used cars.
8. Dodd-Frank.
9. Unremitting hostility to Israel. Destroying the Mideast process by imposing unilateral burdens on Israel, forcing Israel to cease construction of Jewish homes, even in Jerusalem, thus compelling Abbas to harden several positions, all while publicly snubbing Prime Minister Netanyahu in the basement of the White House (the first visit) and trying to snub him on the second visit with a horrible policy speech as Netanyahu was flying en route to America.
10. Failure to support Iran’s Green Revolution. A complete silence and abandonment of leadership when Iranians risked their lives for freedom, while backing the Moslem Brotherhood uprising in Egypt.
11. Failure to support the Syrian people’s revolution against Assad. Utter failure to lead until it was impossible to overlook the massacres by a dictator who actively finances and supports Iran and Hezbollah, America’s sworn enemies in Iraq and South Lebanon.
12. The Libyan Fiasco. Entering Libya while failing to consult Congress. No sense of whether we are supporting people just as bad as Qaddafi. Remaining in the war more than 90 days without obtaining Congressional approval. Lying about violating the War Powers Act by claiming there are no “hostilities” in Libya.
13. The Gulf oil disaster. Bumbling in handling the Gulf oil disaster — refusing aid from countries with oil-cleaning vessels, failing to accept offers of boom to corral the spill, bringing in underwater filmmaker James Cameron as an expert.
14. Closing down oil exploration. The unnecessary moritorium on permitting oil exploration in the aftermath of the Gulf oil disaster, contributing to a massive explosion of oil prices, even leading a federal court to overturn him.
15. EPA interference. The shutdown of Shell’s Arctic oil exploration by EPA
16. Cap-and-Trade Fiasco. The push in Congress for a disastrous “cap-and-trade” plan that would stymie the coal, electric, and natural gas industries, while enormously raising Americans’ home fuel prices, leading even his own party’s U.S. Senator from West Virginia to film a TV promise to voters that he will shoot the proposal full of holes.
17. Use of federal agencies to bypass Congressional oversight. The attempt, after Congress refused to adopt his cap-and-trade nonsense, to bypass Congressional opposition and impose cap-and-trade undemocratically via the EPA.
18. Use of FCC initially to restrict free speech. The push for unconstitutional restrictions on free speech on his political enemies on Talk Radio while assuring protections for unions to spend money on campaigns via The Disclose Act.
19. The Disclose Act and cherry-picking. The attempt to unconstitutionally impose The Disclose Act on his political opponents but not unions via Executive Order.
20. Czars to bypass Congressional oversight. The use of unaccountable “czars” who effectively run huge segments of the American Government without being accountable to Congress and who are protected from Congressional subpoena power.
21. Boorish shaming of Supreme Court justices. The embarrassing and arrogant verbal assault on the Supreme Court while Court Justices courteously attended the first State of the Union address, sitting in front of him, leading most to boycott the subsequent State of Union addresses.
22. Boorish attempt to shame Paul Ryan. The similarly embarrassing and arrogant verbal assault on Rep. Paul Ryan when addressing the federal budget, with Ryan having been invited personally by Obama to attend the speech and sit in front of him.
23. Boorish attempt to shame John McCain. The insulting, embarrassing, and arrogant gloating at John McCain during the televised sham negotiation over Obamacare, when he responded to McCain not substantively but by saying that Obama had won and McCain had lost the election — so there!
24. Refusal to prosecute Black Panthers for Voter Intimidation. Obama’s and Attorney-General Eric Holder’s politicization of the Department of Justice, including refusing to prosecute the Black Panther voter-intimidation case in Philadelphia.
25. Marriage Act. Obama’s and Holder’s refusal to defend the Federal Defense of Marriage Act, an act of Congress.
26. Lies, Lies, Lies. The regular use of straw-man demonizations to try winning support for his unpopular legislation, like accusing doctors of performing unnecessary surgery so that they can enrich themselves by imposing misery on their patients.
27. Throwing his grandmother under the bus. Using his grandmother as a foil to win points, calling her a racist like “typical white people.”
28. Bowing to the Saudi King and the Japanese emperor. Literally.
29. Treating our British alliance contemptuously. Shamefully returning to Great Britain the bust of Winston Churchill that they had given us and that had reposed in the White House, while insulting the Queen and the Prime Minister with inane gifts like DVDs. The subsequent fiasco while toasting the Queen, continuing to talk during the playing of the British National Anthem.
30. Violating and abrogating long-standing promises to our allies. Removing the missile shield from Poland and the Czech Republic to placate Putin.
31. Standing with the aspiring Honduran dictator. Backing the would-be dictator of Honduras when that nation’s duly convoked Supreme Court had removed him from office in careful compliance with law.
32. FTAs with allies. Failure to push for quick ratification of free trade agreements with Columbia, Panama and South Korea.
33. Amateurish handling of Afghanistan military effort. The painfully over-extended indecision, for months, whether to authorize a military surge into Afghanistan, then exacerbating the indecision by announcing to our enemies a date-certain withdrawal timeline — a time coordinated with his reelection bid.
34. Incoherence on how to handle the anti-Mubarak uprising in Egypt. Dispatching Frank Wizner as his emissary, then rejecting Wizner’s advice.
35. Radicalizing the NLRB outside Congressional purview. Appointing [Harold] Craig Becker, a radical unionist, to the NLRB through a recess appointment that otherwise never would have passed Congress.
36. Radicalizing FCC outside Congressional purview. Appointing FCC commissioners who are pursuing “net neutrality” without Congressional authorization.
37. Ecology gone wild in California. Wiping out much of the agricultural economy of California’s Central Valley by restricting full water deliveries to protect a small Delta Smelt fish
38. Gitmo debacles. Promising to close the Guantanamo Bay facility that interns terrorists, trying to close it, failing to close it, refusing to concede his error or assure that “Gitmo” will remain open.
39. Civil trials for terrorists debacles. Promising to move terrorist trials to civilian courts, then trying to prosecute Khalid Sheik Mohammed in Downtown New York, only to be opposed even by the two ultra-liberal Democrat U.S. Senators of New York, then pressing to try another terrorist, Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, in civilian court, resulting in the terrorist being acquitted on 284 of 285 counts.
40. Napolitano out of touch. The shameful failure of Obama’s Homeland Security chief, Janet Napolitano, to appreciate the Obama Administration’s security failures in the face of the near-catastrophe of the “underwear bomber” in the skies over Detroit, as she insisted “the system worked.”
41. Student loans. Government takeover of the student loan program
42. Border security. Cancellation of the “virtual border fence” project with no replacement, while deploying National Guard troops to do paper work at desk jobs and provide office assistance rather than stand armed along the border.
43. The “Beer Summit.” In the aftermath of wrongly castigating and erroneously pre-judging fault regarding the Cambridge Police Department, tying up the country with a foolish spectacle on the White House lawn.
44. Immigration and Arizona. The Department of Justice’s attack on Arizona for that state’s exercise of its sovereign legislative authority on the issue of citizen identification rules. Failure of his own federal government to execute the law on immigration.
45. The attack on Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. Attacking the Wisconsin governor and his state legislature for exercising their sovereign legislative authority on public employment issues, while Obama failed to acknowledge that the new Wisconsin rules are comparable to those that always have applied to federal employees.
46. Lying to McCain on their deal over campaign fundraising. Violating his pledge to John McCain to abide by McCain-Feingold limits for funding his Presidential campaign.
47. Downplaying American exceptionalism. Apology tours.
48. Implying that the Minnesota bridge collapse was the result of lack of infrastructure funding
49. Chicago Olympics fiasco. Shamefully inserting himself into a botched campaign to bring Olympic Games to Chicago, thereby exposing the Presidency of the United States to ridicule and formal rejection, and demonstrating early-on his overconfident sense of himself and his unpreparedness for the seriousness of his office.
50. Hypocritical attack on D.C. public school voucher effort. The attack on a voucher program for Washington, D.C. schools, even as his own children are protected from the educational failures that curse the Washington populace.
51. Associating with the murky. Associations with convicted unrepentant domestic terrorists and eccentric haters of America: the Reverend Wright, William Ayres, Van Jones.
52. Anita Dunn. Her war against Fox News and her boastfulness that the Obama White House has the “courage to speak truth to Power” — when it is the White House, not a cable TV station, that is “Power”; and her speech to schoolchildren, as a White House representative, sharing with the young and impressionable her idolization and admiration of mass-murderer Mao Tse-Tung.
53. ACORN.
54. SEIU. Having Andrew Stern, President of SEIU, as the man who has visited the White House more than any other person during the Obama term.
55. Teleprompters / White House for Dummies. A reliance on teleprompters to protect him from stumbling and bumbling speeches when, without scripting, he has spoken of his visits to America’s “57 states,” has denigrated the handicapped, could not pronounce “corpsman,” moronically said that Austrians speak “Austrian,” referred to deceased war heroes adding that many were in the audience he was addressing, and has made more gaffes than Dan Quayle.
56. Arrogance and Haughtiness. An extreme level of personal nose-in-the-air arrogance and lack of graciousness, from physical comportment to the way he addresses others. The Roman columns. The arrogant temerity to tell Americans, God-like, that history will record his coronation as the moment that the rivers stopped rising and the planet healed.
57. Chicago Corruption. The house he corruptly acquired through Tony Rezko.
58. The artificial shifting dialects. Affecting an artificial accent when speaking to unions, and to others with whom he allies in his “class wars,” that belies his having grown up in Hawaii, reared by a Caucasian grandmother, his having spent years being schooled in Indonesia, and later attending school at Occidental College in California, Columbia University, and Harvard Law School.
59. Lack of transparency. Refusing to share his academic records or the sources through which he paid for private college and law school, despite his pre-election calls for transparency.
60. Failure to lead on immigration. Not confronting the immigration issue when he dominantly controlled both the House and a filibuster-proof Senate, then mocking the GOP on immigration, saying they would not be happy with “alligators and moats” — when all they want is secure borders.

61. Fiscal irresponsibility on foreign relations with Egypt. Forgiving billions of dollars in Egyptian and related Mideast debt when we are past the 14.3 trillion debt line.
62. Wasting billions on corrupt “Palestine” agencies. Pumping billions more into the discredited United Nations Relief & Works Agency (UNRWA) and the Palestinian Authority that merged with the terrorist Hamas.

64. Acceding to political bribery by cherry-picking waivers to Obamacare for favored donors. Forcing Obamacare down the throats of small businesses across America that cannot afford it . . . then approving politically correct and electoral pay-off waivers for his friends, donors, and rich boutique businesses. Granting 20% of all the country’s Obamacare waivers in Pelosi’s San Francisco district. Buying off votes from Ben Nelson of Nebraska (the Cornhusker Deal), Mary Landrieu (the Louisiana Purchase) to pass Obamacare.

65. Using the White House to crush political opposition. Trying to force donors to his political opponents to reveal their contributions. Using the White House official website asking supporters to report to the Government instances of people criticizing Government policies.

66. Attempting to crush media opposition. Punishing a Boston newspaper whose editorial attacked him, having his White House conduct a war against Fox News, claiming they are an entertainment, not a news organization, and then boycotting Fox until that strategy backfired.

67. Encouraging cultural decline. Inviting “Common,” a “poet” with disgusting lyrics of hate, to entertain at the White House

68. The Louis XVI Factor. Vacations and high-profile golf during the Gulf oil crisis, prompting even Democrat strategist and Presidential advisor James Carville to erupt in fury. More high-profile golf at Cape Cod while the country was losing its AAA credit rating for the first time.
69. The Marie Antoinette Factor. Michelle high-profile huge trips abroad, a la Eva Peron, with family friends and their children partying on the public payroll, at 5-star hotels in places like Spain.
70. Al Sharpton. Launching his national presidential reelection campaign with a speech to Al Sharpton’s base.
71. Secrecy in Legislation. Failing to honor his pledge to conduct transparent governance, crafting Obamacare with Democrats behind closed doors barred to Republicans, leaving Obamacare as a massive document so convoluted that Nancy Pelosi had to tell the media: “But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.”
72. A philosophy of redistributing other people’s money. Trying to persuade “Joe the Plumber” that it is a beneficial national economic goal to “redistribute the wealth.”
73. Cynically blaming Republicans and Talk Radio for the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. Blaming their rhetoric, while failing to address Democrat use of vile and violent language to describe Republicans and the Tea Party.
74. Lying about a family connection to the Holocaust. Lying and falsely telling Americans that his grandfather was among those who liberated Auschwitz when, in fact, no American troops liberated Auschwitz.
75. Failing to grasp the Israel narrative. Describing Israel’s right to exist as premised on the Holocaust, thus missing the entire point of a Jewish country built on the land where Jews have lived since Biblical times.
76. Lying about a family connection to the Civil Rights movement. Telling Americans that his birth happened because his parents became amorous as a result of the 1965 Selma Civil Rights March — even though he was born in 1961.
77. Collapse of the housing market. American housing prices lowest since 2002.
78. Manipulating legislation by forcing votes on massive documents. Racing massive thousand-page legislation packages through Congress without allowing Congress or the American People time to read, comprehend, and absorb the bill — and thus breaking a major campaign promise.
79. The Credit Rating downgrade. Presiding over the first credit-rating downgrade in American history.
80. Timing military campaigns to coincide with election campaigns. Manipulating and sacrificing the lives of American soldiers, basing a withdrawal from Afghanistan not on strategic national security considerations but timed instead to coincide with the start of the 2012 Democrat Presidential Convention.
81. NLRB. Stacking the National Labor Relations Board with left-focused political hacks who are attempting to prevent America’s leading exporter, Boeing, from building a $1 billion manufacturing plant in South Carolina because that state permits employment of non-union labor.
82. Cynically manipulating the national Strategic Oil Reserve. Releasing 30 million barrels of oil from the United States Strategic Petroleum Reserve in order to obtain the temporary political goal of lowering gasoline prices that have skyrocketed in the face of his severe restrictions on permitting exploration in the Gulf of Mexico, along the Atlantic coast, and in Alaska in his obsessive pursuit of “green jobs.”
83. “Operation Fast and Furious” debacle. Allowing Mexican drug lords to access illegal firearms, then losing track of the firearms while the drug cartels used the illegal firearms for crime including murdering Americans.
84. Lying, lying, and more lying to voters. Trying to create class warfare by telling people that Republicans’ refusal to raise taxes will cause youngsters to be unable to finance their college educations, while causing seniors to lose health care and social security payments. Failing to admit honestly that Congress extended the Bush tax cuts and refused to increase taxes even when Democrats had a filibuster-proof Senate and veto-proof control of both Congressional chambers.
85. Investigating CIA patriots. The Holder investigation into CIA operatives’ interrogations of suspected Al Qaeda terrorists and their use of methods that had been approved in advance by the Justice Department.
Here are my additions:
86. the Solyndra scandal.
87. Noncompliance by Eric Holder and the White House for information relating to various investigations.
88. Requesting help from an anti-American terrorist group, Pakistan’s ISI to negotiate with the Al-Qaeda supporting Haqqani network.
89. Bankrolling failed green manufacturing schemes in Finland and Spain, to the tune of hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars.
90. having an Islamist Turkish government, that openly engaged in a terrorist attack on Israel, join an anti-terrorism task force.
91. Delaying the decision for the Keystone XL pipeline, even though there have been numerous studies proving its safety, and costing thousands of US jobs.
92. Delaying shale gas drilling in Wayne National forest over fracking concerns even though are already known to be fallacious.
93. Classifying Major Hassan’s attack at Ft. Hood in which 13 people were murdered as workplace violence rather than a terrorist attack.
94. Politely asking the Iranian government to return our spy drone, therefore furthering the impression that the US is a laughingstock.
95. Failure to negotiate a SOFA with Iraq thereby assuring that no US troops will be in Iraq to prevent the establishment of Iranian hegemony over that country. That is, turning a victory into a defeat.
96. The constant comparisons between himself and better presidents; so far he has tried to compare himself to Lincoln, both Roosevelts and Reagan.
97. Inability to even understand the threat the Moslem Brotherhood and radical Islamist pose to the US, the west and Arab liberals.
98. Giving moral support, a wink and a nod, to the miscreants of the OWS crowd.
99. Failure to destroy America’s top secret spy drone after it fell into Iranian hands.
100. Living in abject fear of Iran going to war with the US in spite of the fact they are conducting constant operations against our troops in Afghanistan and against our allies.
101. The release of several Iranian terrorists who kidnapped and murdered US soldiers in Karbala, Iraq in exchange for the bodies of their kidnap victims.
102. The effort to ensure voter fraud by attacking picture voter identification.
103. Failing to keep quiet about the bin Laden raid as long as possible so that the intelligence from the raid could be used. Once the enemy knows you have intelligence on him he will change his plans and locations.
104. Failure to understand that the war on terror is NOT only a war against Al-Qaeda but rather a war against the political culture of the middle east.
105. Distinguishing between Al-Qaeda and the regime that harbored it, the Taliban. If this was George Bush’s policy Al-Qaeda would still be sheltered by the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.

This is the best and most compelling article I have ever read about Obama’s hypocrisy, I wish there was someway to get it to every voter before November 2012. Certainly, all my friends and relatives will read it. Thanks for your incite. God Bless

This was posted to the Charlie Rose Comment Board for the Mathew Dowd interview of 12/7/11.

Mr Rose during the Dowd interview you asked, “Is it inexperience” in Obama that makes him a sic poor leader? The answer to your question is that if it were an issue of “EXPERIENCE” one would think that, the on the job training of nearly 3 full years years would make Obama a more efficaious leader. THIS HAS NOT BEEN THE CASE, President Obama is as inept at leading the nation as the day he stepped into office. Therfore there MUST be another cause for the Obama leadership style and that comes down to PERSONALITY TRAITS.

One will reiterate to you once again, in very clear terms why President Obama is a POOR LEADER:

1. Barrack Obama’s personality set is more suited for academia than the Oval Office. As stated so many times before BO likes to stay in his head (INTELLECTUALIZE) and does not like to be emotional. BO pushes emotion away as being something confusing and messy to deal with. This is a sure prescription of someone who does not do well in real time..(Make Decisions)as decision making involves risk and therefore emotion. He will seem detached as Gen MCHrystal noticed in his conversations with BO on Afghan policy. Further his intellectualization seperates him from using emotion as an intutive device, this seperation leads him to make false assumptions based upon intellectualization about the mood of the nation. This is what makes BO out of touch with the American people.

2. BO’s was brought up by a very “Socially Conscience” Mother. As such he has a perception of the world as seen through the eyes of Social Democrat/Marxist. His chosen profession is that of a Community Organizer,as such he does not understand what makes the US economy tick. Rather his Economic Perceptions are based upon ideological notions of social and economic equality which are anthama to the business class. He does not see nor understand the other side of the coin, nor does he listen and learn even though he may give lip service to the contrary.

Further Mr Dowd stated that Preident Obama “has never confronted his own Party.” Mr Rose this issue was addressed to you, in an email in 8/09 and is reprinted as follows for the edification of the matter .

Why Obama Will Never Be A Lincoln

08/21/2009 – 02:20 — tabs

This observation goes beyond trite partisan politics, but instead goes to the heart and soul of a man. It takes a look at the inside of a mans character and the “true grit” that he brings to the table.

To begin with one must take a look at the mans personal history. As everyone knows BO was a kid who was moved from family situation to family situation. The hallmark of this as previously stated was that he was always the outsider looking in, even within his own personality. This has given him the objectivity of the outsider, or one who has the ability to be a detached observer of events and feelings.

It was only when BO met his Michelle that he was accepted for who he was and given the comfort and stability of a home. That he found love. It has been reported that while on the campaign trail he would always travel with someone from back home to give him the familiarity of that grounding stability.

BO has always been known as a cautious individual, always evaluating the risk involved in any political move. Further he has always relied on discourse as his method of achieving his goals. These two behavioral traits leads us to the third piece and that is BO legislative history, he has always voted Yes or Present with his own Party and never ever voted NO against his party.

This leads one to conclude that within him himself he can not risk being ostracized by his own political family. He will always go along, he will never be his own man but be subservient to the dictates of his own party. He will not face the fear and disappointment within himself of losing the only home he has ever known. He is not willing to go it alone in the world if necessary and suffer the slings and arrows of being your own man with his own principles and thoughts. This becomes obvious in letting his own party dictate the terms of the Stimulus, Budget, Cap and Trade and Health Care bills. This is why BO will never be a Lincoln.

Lincoln by contrast was willing to face adversity and was willing to go it alone if necessary, to be his own man. . The most telling fact of this in Lincolns life is the fact that he rose above his own fathers ostracization of him for wanting to rise above his station in life, that of being a poor illiterate dirt farmer from Illinois’s. This was Lincolns transcendent moment. He became his own man guided by his own principles and own thoughts.

Because one wears the cloak of Caesar and or affects the mannerism of Caesar it does not mean he is a Lincoln, TR, FDR, Truman, Reagan or Caesar.

Mr Hansen is still operating under the illusion that BO is competent. In other words Mr Hansen like so many others hears the rhetoric of a Barrack which is the veneer and or image that BO likes to portray himself as or the image of himself that he clings to. Yet the reality of BO is that he is still just a Barry when he puts his head on the pillow at night. Mr Hansen should see beyond the superficial image and look at the heart and soul of the man.

Mr. Hanson, thank you for a review of the idiocy, hypocrisy, outright lies and deception that we have been dealing with for the last 3 years.

Many of us knew this would be the case because the truth was there to find during the ’07 campaign. For those who believed and developed the myth while the truth was staring them in the face it seems unlikely that the truth matters to them at all. To them the myth has become the only important “fact”.

He’s simply a strawman fronted by The Center for American Progress, formerly headed by John Podesta. (Axelrod is savy but, on non-election years, only surfaces on occasion to mock someone, call names and/or booster the Chicago tough guy politician image.)

Ah, that would explain it. A myth for brilliance based upon the teleprompter.

As opposed, I suppose, to a myth for “brilliance” that is constructed on the basis of thinly sourced and dubiously interpreted ruminations upon antiquity by a side-show barker whose sole scholarly contribution to his presumptive field lies a distant 30 years in the past and whose principal claim on the public’s attention, apart from the traditional Wingnut Welfare that keeps him ensconced at Hoover, is a pulled-from-his-backside series of edited volumes, gentle reviews of equally tendentious books by his fellow-travelers, and the occasional ham-handed attempt to compare the latest warmonger over whom he indulges in fanboy swooning to some notable of ancient Greece, made impressive for the mouth-breathers and the rubes by extensive use of the thesaurus, and all of which has been characterized by actual scholars as being “angry,” “preachy,” “moralizing,” “flippant,” “repetitious,” and “at least a hundred pages too long.”

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